


Midnighters

by drinkbloodlikewine, whiskeyandspite



Category: Adam (2009), Charlie Countryman (2013), Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Anal, Cleverness, Computers, Drug Use, Fluff, Heist AU, M/M, Minor Character Death, Oral, Overdose, Possessiveness, Protectiveness, Teasing, Violence, a lot of fucking swearing, adoration, hacker!Adam
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-12
Updated: 2015-04-16
Packaged: 2018-03-12 01:15:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 52,228
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3338612
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drinkbloodlikewine/pseuds/drinkbloodlikewine, https://archiveofourown.org/users/whiskeyandspite/pseuds/whiskeyandspite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>"Why the fuck are you here?”</i> </p><p><i>Adam frowns, expression one of almost childish displeasure. “Because you need help with computers,” he repeats. “Security systems. They all speak the same language, Nigel, it doesn’t matter what the system is, I can talk to it. Can you talk to it?” Nigel starts to answer, perhaps just a profanity to fill the air and return the room to a semblance of its former displeased normalcy, but the kid interrupts him. “No, otherwise you wouldn’t need me to do that for you.”</i> </p><p>Nigel does not need another man on his team for this heist. He doesn't fucking need one. And he certainly doesn't need Adam fucking Raki, but there he fucking is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Written because Spacedogs is amazing, and it was about time we wrote some.
> 
> Just in time for Spacedogs Week on Tumblr, hosted by the ever-awesome [granpappy-winchester](http://granpappy-winchester.tumblr.com/)!
> 
> [This series has timestamps!!](http://archiveofourown.org/series/247411)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“I’ve never broken a security system,” Adam replies, and there seems to be something in that answer almost beyond it, its own implication._
> 
> _“Have you fixed one?”_
> 
> _Adam’s lips tilt in a smile that is so genuine it seems almost unreal, before it settles to something softer._
> 
> _“I’ve fixed three.”_

“You think this is a good idea.”

It isn’t a question.

“I don’t -”

“So you don’t think this is a good idea.”

“I think - I think that he’s worth talking to.”

“You do think, then. Fucking poorly but you do fucking think.”

“Look, if you can’t stand him we’ll -”

“We’ll fucking what?” Nigel asks, hands curling around the arm of his chair.

“I don’t know,” the other man replies. “Fucking get rid of him. Not use him. I don’t know.”

“This is a fucking mistake,” Nigel informs his collaborator. “You are a fucking mistake, do you fucking hear me? You don’t bring in new fucking people to a new fucking job - you use people you can fucking trust, do you fucking hear me?”

“Yes,” comes the rough reply, a hard swallow. “I hear you. I can send him away if you wa-”

“Send him in,” decides Nigel. “Since you’ve already told him god-fucking-knows what, send him in, and if he so much as fucking takes a breath too fucking long to answer, you’re both dead.”

The man goes, shaking his head and ignoring the sound Nigel makes behind him before opening the door and leaning out to see if the man is still _there_ , let alone already being untrustworthy. He wonders if the guy even could be, the way he looks. But he had been recommended, someone ‘trusted’ enough to listen to. And he’s a fucking kid, worst came to it, few people would miss him, if any.

“Oi.” The young man looks up from his book, eyes wide and blue and entirely too ridiculous to even come near a place like this. The guy gestures over his shoulder. “Nigel wants to see you.”

Without a word, the young man stands, takes his book with him, fingers between the pages - more than halfway through it, now, and he had only been starting it when he’d been told to sit the fuck down and shut the fuck up - and follows. He’s closed off, hands and book held against his stomach, head ducked, eyes to the floor and walking carefully as though he’s scared he’ll trip.

In truth, he looks like quite literally the worst candidate to even be here. But ‘trusted’, ‘recommended’, what the fuck ever, so he’s here. He says nothing, but he does stop well enough away to be seen and hear well enough when he’s yelled at - inevitably. At least the kid’s obedient.

Nigel scarcely looks him over - dark hair and big eyes and hell if he looks a day out of secondary school and he’s wearing a fucking sweater - and blinks as the young man steps towards him.

“Hello, you must be Nigel,” he says quickly, hand thrust outward. “My name is Adam, it’s nice to meet you.”

A glance is spared withering towards his collaborator, before Nigel grudgingly shakes the kid’s hand. “Nigel’s the name he gave you? That’ll work for now.”

Adam blinks, eyes just to the side of where Nigel would hold his gaze, it’s strangely deliberate, adjusted in such a way as to appear entirely practiced, like trying to catch the eye of someone blind. Then he blinks again and shrugs, just one shoulder, lifts his eyes and looks to the side.

“Clem said you needed help with computers. I’m good with computers. Computers make sense and don’t talk back, and they give me the time I need to understand them without trying to speak instead.”

Nigel starts to return to his seat but as Adam stands, so does Nigel. Wariness, maybe - unfamiliarity but aware enough that there’s something _off_ here. He’d be very bad at his job - and certainly dead long ago - if he weren’t a good read of people, and so he remains as Adam does, watching him. “What exactly did Clem tell you?”

A blink, and Adam tilts his head a little. “That you needed help with computers.”

“Security systems.”

“Okay.”

“Okay?”

“Okay,” repeats Adam.

Nigel’s eyes narrow. “Have you ever worked on security systems before?”

“No,” Adam answers, and Nigel’s lips twist against his teeth.

“No,” he echoes. He waits for more an explanation, anything else forthcoming, anything that might save this strange kid’s life and himself the trouble of having to end it, but Adam’s expression is lucid, and his voice quiet. Nigel reaches for his cigarettes from the table, patience enough to light it and sigh long before speaking again. “So if you don’t know what you’re doing, why the fuck are you here?”

Adam frowns, expression one of almost childish displeasure. “Because you need help with computers,” he repeats. “Security systems. They all speak the same language, Nigel, it doesn’t matter what the system is, I can talk to it. Can you talk to it?” Nigel starts to answer, perhaps just a profanity to fill the air and return the room to a semblance of its former displeased normalcy, but the kid interrupts him. “No, otherwise you wouldn’t need me to do that for you.”

All three men in the room are silent for a moment, Adam done with his explanation, looking for the world like he will genuinely roll his eyes if he is asked again ‘why’, Nigel balancing his cigarette against his bottom lip, as his jaw hangs slack at being interrupted, at being almost reprimanded by a kid that looks like he will snap in a breeze. His companion just looks pale, wondering if perhaps Clem had had it in for him in the end, put the kid into their path to mess up the team dynamic enough to fuck up.

“Sit,” Nigel tells him. There’s a pause, a little too long, as Adam scans the chairs and Nigel’s brow furrows. “Fucking that one. Sit.”

He points, to the one closest to Adam, and grunts past his cigarette in something vaguely akin to approval when he pulls out the chair and takes a seat. Nigel does the same, across from him, ashing his cigarette to the floor and watching. Just watching, for now, the nervous flickers of movement in Adam’s hands, the darting eyes that take in the small apartment where Nigel finds himself, for now. Easily acquired, easily paid for in unquestioned cash, and just as readily abandoned should the need present itself.

Nigel ignores the sigh of relief from the third man, who takes the opportunity to step back outside the apartment and shut the door quietly behind him. “You can disable them?”

“Disabling them is the easy part,” Adam retorts. “Making something not work is much simpler than making them work.”

“Without setting it off?” Nigel presses, leaning forward to rest his forearms against the table, cigarette balanced between his fingers.

Adam sits back in the same motion, not in disgust, but to keep their distance the same, Nigel notices. It’s becoming clearer that the kid isn’t your run of the mill back-street hacker. He might not even be a hacker. A savant or what the fuck ever. He watches as Adam’s eyes take in the smoke from his cigarette, trace the patterns it makes in the air before it dissipates as he thinks. Blinks. Parts his lips with a frown and closes them again.

“It is all a manner of communication,” he explains.

“And getting around the safety protocols.”

“And getting around the safety protocols,” Adam agrees with a nod. “A turn off without a set off, an adjustment in the system itself to allow for the access later, if you want to break it down again.”

“You ever done this before?”

Adam shrugs again, that same one-shoulder motion that repeats as though he has an ache, then it stops, as though he’d never done it.

“I’ve helped Clem with computers before,” he says, almost evasive if Nigel didn’t think the kid incapable of subtleties and evasion. “I have broken systems before.”

“But never security systems.”

“I’ve never broken a security system,” Adam replies, and there seems to be something in that answer almost beyond it, its own implication.

“Have you fixed one?”

Adam’s lips tilt in a smile that is so genuine it seems almost unreal, before it settles to something softer.

“I’ve fixed three.”

“Reset your neighbor’s beeping alarm?” snorts Nigel, rolling his eyes as Adam nods.

“Sure.”

“Is that it then?”

“No.”

“Tell me,” Nigel intones, pacing his words, “what you have fucking done, Adam.”

“Card-based access systems, intrusion detection systems, keycode panels which are very poor means of security,” Adam rattles off, brows raised high beneath his hair. “You can’t have a keycode system without a master code, and though it’s usually a four-digit code on a nine-digit pad, that’s only 495 possible permutations if you’re allowed to repeat numbers -”

“Four hundred,” repeats Nigel, “and ninety-five. Only.”

“Yes, so they’re very easy to resolve.”

“How the fuck is that easy to resolve?”

The corner of Adam’s mouth twitches upward. “Hardly anyone ever changes it from the default master code.”

“Tell me about the intrusion detection.”

Adam sighs. “That could be anything from glassbreak recognition to photoelectric beam devices -” Lifting a hand - in defeat, perhaps - Nigel presses the other against his eyes, balancing the last dregs of his cigarette as he does. It does nothing to stop the onslaught that word by fucking word is grinding into a vicious headache. “Do they have an access control system?”

“Do they fucking what? Do they have fucking what?”

“An access control system,” Adam repeats. “Do they use cards for entry?”

Nigel’s suspicions flare along with the cherry on his cigarette, before he flicks it into one of the empty bottles littering the table. “How the fuck do you know that?”

“If you’re in this area, it means you’re close to where you need to be. It wouldn’t make any sense to be far across town from it. There’s an industrial area close to here, and most warehouses use centralized access - a control system - if they’re at all updated on their security, which they must be, because otherwise you wouldn’t need me.” Adam pauses, just long enough to breathe. “And if they keep all of the security in one place, then all you need to reach is that one place.”

Finally, the barrage of words stop and he sits, still and silent, and Nigel wonders just how stupid Clem may or may not be. Nigel’s a good read of people but for all his information, Adam could be a plant or the real thing, and he finds himself at an infuriating loss as to determining which he is. “You’re like in that movie - you know, with Top Gun and the Graduate.”

It takes Adam a moment, eyes lifted towards the ceiling, before he grins, just a little. “Rain Man?”

Nigel hums, slouching back into his chair, hands spread across the table.

“Raymond is on an entirely different part of the spectrum from me,” Adam comments, and Nigel rolls his eyes to the ceiling. If anything, the kid sounds practiced, maybe just good with his memory, good with acting entirely out of it, but nothing more than that. All he has to go on, as proof that this kid can do anything, is that Clem recommended him, and he has never had trouble with Clem before.

Trust among thieves.

Or honor, whatever. Nigel doubts either really exists. He watches Adam. Adam does not watch him back, though occasionally his eyes skim over the man in quick motions before moving away. He still cannot seem to look at him, perhaps he doesn’t want to. Perhaps he genuinely can’t. Nigel supposes there’s little else for him to do but either send the kid away or use him. And if he’s as good as he sounds, he wants to fucking use him.

“So you can do it?”

“You ask pedantic questions for someone who wishes to lead a team into something like this, are you sure you’re capable?” Adam asks him, brows up again before he shifts in his seat and brings the book to his lap, hands still clasping it as though it’s keeping him grounded. “I am good with computers, I have worked on security systems before, and you need me. Otherwise I wouldn’t be here.”

A moment passes.

Another.

And the next sound is Nigel’s chair hitting the floor as he stands - fuck the distance, fuck the scale, and fuck the little know-it-all in front of him. “I am more than fucking capable and those are big fucking words for someone who needs the fucking work just as badly as I need it fucking done,” he snarls, voice only just kept beneath a shout. “Don’t act like you’re here out of the kindness of your fucking heart, Adam - you’re not here because I fucking need you, you’re here because you need fucking money.”

For a moment, Adam looks lost, the raised voice, the change of position enough to make him draw into himself, entirely tense, entirely uncomfortable, but still he doesn’t move, doesn’t get out of the way of Nigel’s wrath and outburst, he sits, and he waits, and then quietly, almost too quietly, he replies.

“I have money. I’m here because Clem said you needed the help, because right now he doesn’t need the help and if I sit idle I can’t bear it. Rooms too quiet and people too noisy and nothing to do -” Adam takes a breath, forcibly holds it until his cheeks start to redden before he lets it go in a rush of words. “I am here because I’m bored, I get bored and I need something to do, and computers make sense, they don’t ask anything or need anything, they just talk and I listen.”

Breathing gets shallower, harder, but still he sits, eyes closed now, gently rocking in his seat, fingers working a pattern over the cover of his book. He’s lost his page, now, both hands clasped atop it.

It’s a rare thing for Nigel to question himself.

Rarer still for him to feel any sort of regret for things he’s said or things he’s done.

And for a moment, as he watches the younger man stabilize himself, slowly, mind working in ways that Nigel can’t even begin to fucking fathom, it pulls at him. He sits. He does not seek out Adam’s eyes but instead averts his own to the tabletop, unable to shake the weight in his chest - unable to figure out how to make it better.

“Hey,” Nigel tries, glancing up, dropping his gaze again. “It’s fine - it’s a lot of fucking stress - but it’s fine. You sound like you know your shit,” he admits, reluctantly, unable still to stop himself from asking, “Are you sure you can keep it together out there? It’s gotta be fast and fucking perfect.”

Slow breaths, enough to ease down the tension, Adam’s fingers flexing gently before they clasp the book to hold it, not to hold himself together. He nods.

“You need me to see computers, you don’t need me to see people. I can see computers. I can do it fast and I can do it perfect.” It sounds almost like a mantra, when Adam repeats it to himself before shrugging his shoulder again, raising his head and taking a deliberate breath. “I can do it perfect if no one distracts me. People are noisy, they need things, and I can’t give them that, I can’t talk, I can’t laugh with them. My mind works quickly one way, not another way. I can do your computers. I can’t do your stealing.”

“Who says we’re stealing?” Nigel’s lips quirk and Adam narrows his own to a flat line.

“You want me to dismantle a major security network, you want it not to go off, you want me not to leave a trace, to let you get in and out at will afterwards. You don’t need this because you forgot a code or a keycard - you need it because you’re stealing something.” Adam tilts his head, leans forward a little. “My mind works differently than yours, Nigel, but I am not stupid.”

Nigel ducks his head a little more, smile curving beneath his eyes though it doesn’t reach his mouth. “No,” he answers, honestly. “You’re not.”

Still, it’s hard to imagine how this will work. The kid nearly pissed himself when Nigel raised his voice, so what happens if something goes wrong? Ideally it’s a quick in and out, facilitated by Adam’s security work, but there’s always a chance that there are more people than accounted for - a change in plans that has the warehouse full at night rather than near-empty. If there’s shouting then, gunfire, _violence_ , what happens to the boy wonder then?

Nigel’s jaw works in thought, head tilting to allow him to watch Adam surreptitiously. “What do you need from me? Not just pay, fuck pay, once we’re done it’s whatever you want. What else do you need? You need me to make sure no one fucking disrupts you.”

Adam nods slowly, as though he’s still considering his position in all of this, still considering what he needs beyond the quiet of a single room and the time needed to work his way through the complex code and potential hardware.

“I would need a room for me, for the computer, time to do it,” Adam lists. “Something to drink, preferably soda so I can stay awake, and my sugar levels won’t drop if it takes longer than expected.” He sets the book to the table, cover down, and sets his arms against it, but doesn’t lean forward enough to rest his head against them. “And I need you not to swear.”

Nigel blinks. “Fucking what?”

Adam’s eyelids flicker, the barest movement of displeasure before he continues. “Those who frequently use expletives are considered to be more trustworthy and truthful, and statistically speaking that is not something I will argue against, but personally I find it entirely distasteful and you have used one nineteen times, another twice, with no real reason but to fill in the space between your sentences. Semantically, they are entirely useless, you would save a lot of breath.”

Nigel scoffs, laughing, and watches Adam wide-eyed, entirely unsure if he wants to knock the kid’s teeth in or allow that there is a certain, peculiar charm to his bravado. Stupidity might be another word for it, but Adam isn’t stupid. It’s more like fearlessness, that comes from not having sense enough to know when one should be afraid.

Equals then, in that at least, as Nigel ticks off on his fingers. “You need to get into the room with the - what the f- what did you call it?”

“Access control system.”

“That. You need the room with that. You need to be left alone and for me to fu-... trust you that you’ll do what needs to get done. You need _soda_.”

“And the swearing.”

Nigel lifts his finger and points, rather than ticks another fingertip on his other hand. “That isn’t something you fucking need, it’s something you want. Don’t worry about how the fuck much breath I spend or save, Adam, is that fucking clear?” A pause, and Nigel feels an uncharacteristic stumble as he lowers his hand, and quiets his voice. “I want to work with you, Adam. You seem like a smart fu-... smart kid who knows how to keep fu-... fuck this,” he snarls softly. “A smart kid who knows how to keep fucking quiet. I like that.”

Adam nods. “Good,” he seems to think a minute, consider the priority trees for responses in such situations and adds. “Thank you.”

The exchange is stilted, awkward, uneven. Something Nigel feels and is fairly sure Adam doesn’t notice. He’s calmed, enough that he can slide the book from the table to his lap again, turn his head to regard the apartment again. He is fascinating, like an exotic animal, in that he is entirely human but straddling uncanny valley. The opposite of a humanoid android, Adam is almost like a machine that doesn’t quite have the appropriate programming.

He fidgets, adjusts in his seat, frowns at something he can see and Nigel can’t, and turns to him again, eyes still deliberately away from Nigel’s own, but present, shifting and there.

“How much is my time worth?” Adam asks suddenly, and there is an oddly childish curiosity there that is almost endearing.

From anyone else, Nigel would think it a trick question. A lazy attempt at gauging trust and gullibility to haggle the price higher, and a sign of bad character. At the very least, fishing for compliments or looking for an argument. From Adam, however, Nigel finds that motive hard to imagine, and harder still to imagine that he’s asking out of genuine interest.

“How much did you get paid last time?” Nigel counters.

Adam, nose wrinkling, shakes his head. “Nothing.”

“Why didn’t you get paid anything?”

“Helping out a friend,” answers Adam. He pauses, tongue against the corner of his mouth, and his lips split into a wry smile. “But you’re not my friend.”

Nigel can’t help but laugh, spreading his hand down his face as the laugh becomes a groan. “Of course I’m fucking not. Although it’s not very nice at all to say so,” he observes, letting his hand fall into his lap. Nigel is many things to many people, but one thing he isn’t is dishonest. If anything he takes great pains - on himself, though usually on others - to impress upon people his honesty. If - no, he corrects himself, not fucking if, fucking _when_ \- when this is successful, it will be made so by the young man now watching him, waiting for his answer.

“Ten percent,” Nigel offers. “Whatever we take out of there.”

The math works quickly but the sums don’t add up, and Adam shakes his head a little. “What about the stuff you’re stealing?”

“What the fuck about it?”

“Is that considered part of ‘whatever we take out of there’?”

“You want ten percent of the cash, and ten percent of -” A pause, wetting his lips. “ - after market sales, let’s say. Messier that way. Less of a get-in and get-out,” Nigel advises, eyes twitching just slightly more narrow.

Adam shakes his head, another almost childish gesture in how determined he seems to have his point understood. “You are not stupid, you won’t sell it here, whatever it is. And you will not take it across the border, that is both unwise and unprofitable, so you will export it overseas. A typical increase in demand for such product exists within the Pacific region, developed Asia and most parts of Europe, because of their own laws and the relative stability of both their governments and economy. You probably know that.”

Adam shifts, in a way that suggests he has curled one leg beneath himself, though he has not let go of his book, again, eyes just above Nigel’s left shoulder as he continues, as Nigel reaches to light another cigarette, fairly certain the barrage of words will not stop until it just stops.

“You seek to gain six times more in profits from selling something like heroin, ten times more with cocaine. I would expect that were my skills enough to acquire the things you plan to later sell on, they would be worth the payment of the additional ten percent of weight worth.” Adam presses his lips together, relaxes them. “Initial price before sale would be fair, what happens to it after is not something either of us will know.”

Nigel laughs, a harsh sound, and takes a long drag of his cigarette. “You fucking said you had money.”

“It is not something I need,” Adam clarifies, allowing a smile. “It is something I want.”

“What the fuck for?”

“That isn’t pertinent.”

“When it’s money that I’m giving you, it is extremely fucking pertinent,” Nigel responds, though he is careful now to keep his voice low, not to let it raise beyond a conversational tone. Adam doesn’t seem inclined to provide any more information, though, and the careful - and distinctly honest - cant of his words doesn’t indicate that the younger man is in any sort of trouble. There’s a frantic edge to those who _need_ money, desperation to take any offer made, eagerness to know when they’ll get paid so that they can pay off whatever other debts are looming over them.

Nigel ashes his cigarette and curls his tongue across the front of his teeth in thought. It’s less about the money or the drugs - isn’t about them at all, really, but as icing on the cake of fucking up a rival distributor. The repercussions of that go far deeper, resonate longer, and - for Nigel at least - are far more fucking satisfying than simply lining one’s pockets.

“Deal,” Nigel decides. “But you’re on my fucking timetable until we’re done and you’re paid out. If you do what the fuck I tell you to do, and you do as well as you say you can, there won’t need to be any collateral fucking damage, understand? I’ll take care of the security in the office. You show up when I tell you to show the fuck up, do whatever computer magic you have to do, and then we’re out.”

He doesn’t wait for another influx of words this time, standing and setting his cigarette between his lips. In the drawer of a bedroom dresser, he takes out a burner phone, starts it, and jots the number down on a piece of paper. Easier to dispose of than a phone that holds the information in it, no need to assign a name to the number. When he returns he slides the phone across the table to Adam.

“I’ll call you with more information when we’re ready to move. Any questions?” A dangerous offer, perhaps, but he watches Adam with a decided interest now, fascinated and irritated all at once.

Adam takes the phone up and regards it, a curious turn in his hand, and again, before settling it on the table once more, parallel to the edge.

“How do I charge it?” he asks. The question entirely innocent, entirely left-field. On some logical level it makes sense and yet...

“I’ll call you before you fucking need to charge it.”

The phone is regarded again, almost meditative, before Adam takes it to set into his pocket, returning both hands on his book and looking around the apartment again for a cue to go. It ends up being Nigel pressing the lit tip of his cigarette between his fingers to extinguish it before tossing the butt to the tabletop. Then Adam stands, sets the chair back where it was before he’d occupied it, and holds out his hand for Nigel to take again.

When he had averted his eyes before, Nigel now trains them on the younger man. His gaze isn’t met - he doesn’t expect it to be, noting with amusement how Adam looks just past his eyes, just beneath or above them - but he takes in the look and feel of the younger man, and shakes his hand firmly, once.

“About a week from now,” Nigel tells him, keeping Adam’s hand in his a moment more. He wets his lips and adds, voice softening just a hair, “Don’t get into any trouble.”

Adam looks towards their hands and up again, with a quick smile. “Why would I?”

“Fuck,” sighs Nigel. “Butter wouldn’t melt in your fucking mouth, would it?”

“It would,” answers Adam, and draws a breath to say more before Nigel releases his hand to point towards the door. And Adam goes, miraculously, without a word, politely closing the door behind him as he does.

Nigel reaches for another cigarette and finds himself wondering - against his own fucking will - if Adam had counted the rest of his fucking expletives after his initial comment and how many there ended up being.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“Did you bring me something to drink?” Adam asks, setting his hands to the keys just to see what the screen will do with a basic command. He needs to determine the type of control before he can attempt to confuse it._
> 
> _“I told you I fucking would,” Nigel grunts, setting down a soda - orange - beside the younger man. It’s still cold enough to condensate, and he steps away to light a cigarette, muttering around the filter, “Had to find the fucking vending machine.”_

It takes six calls before Adam finally picks up the disposable, never good on the phone. By that point Nigel is swearing blue murder and it takes a good few minutes before any words beyond ‘fucking’ and ‘shit’ and a few other choice mentions make it through the receiver. Adam fidgets, turning a pen between his fingers over and over and over in endless blurring circles, trying to find a rhythm in Nigel’s voice to cling to.

It’s very early in the morning.

In the end, he’s told to go back to the apartment. 

“Bring whatever the fuck you need, but just get fucking _here_ , Adam.”

Adam nods, shakes his head, realizes Nigel can’t see him. He’s not a fan of the phone.

“I’ll get there,” he promises, winces at the repetition of ‘right the fuck NOW, Adam’ before the line goes dead. He supposes it’s fair enough the man was impatient, anything of this size and calibre would bring out stress. He considers Nigel’s words from the last time they spoke, just four days ago, asking if he would be able to handle the pressure, if he would be able to deal with the stress. Adam thinks of computers, he thinks of the way they quietly work in binary and quick flicks of information. A computer won’t talk back, but it may be stubborn.

He’s used to stubborn.

Adam takes a cab, where last time he had taken the train, and makes his way up the stairs to the rental before quietly knocking on the door.

It’s jerked open before he can finish knocking, and Adam along with it, tugged by the wrist just enough for Nigel to shut the door again and loom over him. “Where the fuck have you been?”

“At home,” breathes Adam, teeth clenched and eyes settled on the tattoo that stretches along the side of Nigel’s taut neck. “And then in a cab.”

From anyone else, it would be a taunt, and they would be answering any additional questions through a broken jaw and missing teeth. Nigel resists the impulse, curling his hand into a fist where his arm braces against the door above Adam’s head. “Too busy to answer the goddamn phone, Adam? Too busy to do your fucking job? The job I’m fucking paying you for that you have to fucking be here when I fucking call you,” Nigel reminds him, dropping his arm to step back. He runs the back of his hand across his mouth and forces a breath, forces his tone to lower. “Are you ready?”

“I don’t like phones,” Adam tells him softly, and it’s almost childish if it weren’t for the genuine discomfort with which he says it. He turns his wrist where he had been grabbed and pulled, rubs it with his other hand before nodding absently. “I’m ready,” he says, and this, at least, holds more conviction.

He’s given the space to breathe himself back into a semblance of calm and normalcy, as he takes in the apartment again. It is scant, not much there beyond the necessities: a table, chairs, small fridge in the corner that looks like it runs on faith and hope alone, the corner of a bed visible through the half-open door to what Adam assumes to be the bedroom. No books. No personal things. Dirty windows.

It’s not a nice apartment but it’s somewhere to sleep. Adam just isn’t sure how Nigel can get by without something to read or nice things to look at, even though a dirty window - it faces the wall of the adjacent building.

“Do you want me to work here?” He asks after a moment more.

Nigel blinks. “Can you?”

“No,” Adam answers, reasonably, as if the question he asked was just that - a curiosity, rather than a suggestion. “There’s no access control here.”

Nigel revisits his previous interest in hitting something, eyes narrowing. “We’re going now. Everyone else is waiting already, on you, Adam, on fucking you because you don’t like the fucking phone. Go.”

Despite the abrasive words, his tone isn’t rancorous - impatient, certainly, and taut with anticipation. It’s a risky thing, to expect this kid to be able to do what needs to be done, on a system he’s never seen before. Riskier still for the dependency on Adam getting it right, quickly and without error, though Nigel certainly isn’t opposed to creating a bit of terror if the shit hits the fan.

The problem with shit hitting the fan is that it creates a mess, and Nigel would rather not spend the day cleaning that up.

“I said fucking go,” he snaps again, pulling his coat tighter. Fingers skim his sidearms, holstered against his sides, press against his pocket for his knife, a quick stock before he opens the door and gives Adam a little shove.

Their car is waiting for them, driven by the man who first let Adam in to see Nigel, looking - luckily for him - no worse for the wear but no less panicked than before.

Adam fidgets where he sits, fingers weaving into and around each other as he stares out the window and ignores everyone in the car. Not that there’s much to pay attention to, the men are both quiet, both tense and almost angry in their need to get this done and get it done right. So Adam ignores that, watches street after street pass him by. He’s sleepy but not tired, still forcing his body awake after the rough wake-up and the courage it had taken to pick up the phone.

They don’t drive long, and turn into an alley that looks like it belongs in a noir film before, predictably, Adam is told to get out. The buildings are nondescript, nothing at all special about them beyond the fact that they are slightly less filthy than the street. The area isn’t a bad one, but it’s not wealthy, just bordering on the industrial area where apartments are scattered or just above the workplaces themselves.

“Inside.”

Adam goes. It’s almost like a film, being led to a secret location to do secret things, but he’s done this before. Despite his worries and Nigel’s occasionally wavering trust, he has done this before. For Clem, for Clem’s friends. Adam’s good with computers. He just needs them to speak his language for a while, then they’ll do anything he tells them.

Within, is not much: a corridor with several rooms off on both sides, one not guarded so much as suspiciously watched, and Adam bites back a smile at the entirely not subtle positioning. He supposes it hardly matters, in the end. They need him in there and he needs to be there alone.

It’s still too early for any diurnal businesses to be open, any that actively use the cards and access, at least, any that masque the nocturnal business beneath. It should not take too long, if all goes well. Adam turns to Nigel and raises his eyebrow. Instruction, perhaps, or a command of his own, it’s unclear.

One, two, three, _there_.

The man stationed to watch the door drops backward in his chair and is gone from the glass window. Nigel’s jaw works, every sinew struck taut as if he’s coiled, ready to fight or flee, and he counts again beneath his breath.

Four, five, six, _there_.

The door at the end of the hall opens, quick steps carrying in a card that’s handed off to Nigel. He presses Adam against the wall, palms the card and swipes it, eliciting a beep from the panel set into the wall.

Seven, eight, nine, _click_.

Nigel opens the door and bangs it shut quickly behind him. From inside the security office there’s the sound of scuffling, wheels against the floor and feet digging in for traction - hissed curses and a sudden, wet snap, followed by a dull thump.

Ten, _click_.

“Get the fuck in here,” Nigel snarls, kicking his foot behind him and earning a groan for it from the man on the floor. His nose has been broken, hands ziptied behind him and his own shirt stuffed into his mouth, a strip of it bound across his eyes. His own headphones are placed over his head, loud enough to be heard tinny from where they keep him deaf, senses stoppered.

Nigel curses a foul oath beneath his breath, ducking to the guard to lift up one side of his headphones. He speaks to him in another language, pulls his gag free just enough to hear his answer, and replaces it all before he goes, suddenly and without explanation.

Adam doesn’t move, not beyond where Nigel had managed to drag him in. He watches the man on the floor, bleeding and sore, soft sounds coming from him as he tries to adjust to the ties, to the position - helpless and knowing he is, and knowing well enough, too, how to work with self-preservation and not attempt to play the hero.

Not that he can, much, here.

Adam watches, paralyzed into a strange sort of trance, entirely silent, entirely still. He knows that by the time Nigel gets back he will yell again, anger and frustration and genuine displeasure that Adam feels against his skin like sandpaper. He should move. He has to move. The computer is right there and he can see it and touch the keys and bring up all the information he needs on the three screens available.

He can.

He just _has_ to now.

Breathe in, step, breathe out, another. It’s slow going but it’s enough, and he makes it to the panel before the door slams open again, jerking Adam’s shoulders higher before he forces them down. Computers. Codes and communication.

Easy.

“Did you bring me something to drink?” Adam asks, setting his hands to the keys just to see what the screen will do with a basic command. He needs to determine the type of control before he can attempt to confuse it.

“I told you I fucking would,” Nigel grunts, setting down a soda - orange - beside the younger man. It’s still cold enough to condensate, and he steps away to light a cigarette, muttering around the filter, “Had to find the fucking vending machine.”

It’s a blessed relief when Adam doesn’t have an observation on the flavor, more when he appears to be ensconced in the terminal he’s opened on the screens. Though he wants to demand information - how long this will take, if he’s going to be able to do it - Nigel remains quiet, still but for his steady smoking, motionless but for another swift kick to the guard when he makes another sound.

“Just tell me when,” mutters Nigel, thumbnail flicking anxious at the filter of his cigarette.

“It’s a DAC,” Adam tells him, taking a sip of soda and setting it aside. “Discretionary Access Control. It’s an interesting structure, makes sense for a collective this size. The data owner determines who can access specific resources. The administrator creates a hierarchy of files to be accessed based on certain permissions.”

“Why the fuck does that matter?”

“I’ve never worked with a DAC before,” Adam replies calmly. It’s almost enough to set the other man off behind him, enough to pull the violence from him if only to just have something to do with his damned hands, to harm someone enough that he feels alive again.

“You fucking what?”

“Usually RBACs or rule based access control, but never a DAC,” Adam repeats, fingers working the keys regardless, in a quick pattern of typing that doesn’t require him to look at the keyboard. “Actually considering what this is, I’m surprised they’re on a DAC, an OrBAC would make much more sense -”

“Can you fucking disable it?”

“I need to access it first.”

“And then can you - fuck, Adam, do not fuck with me - can you fucking do this or are we fucked?”

There is a tension in Adam’s jaw that manifests in a brief flexing of his fingers above the keyboard before he continues to type.

“I need to access it first,” he repeats, tone quieter but somehow higher, frustration and nerves already. “Then we will know.”

“Everyone is fucking waiting -”

“I need to access it first,” Adam repeats, fingers stretching, flexing over the keys.

“Fucking everyone, if someone comes back now, we’re fucked -”

“Nigel,” breathes Adam, terse. “What did I need from you?”

“Fucking soda and the fucking computer,” Nigel answers.

“And?”

 _Quiet_.

“Do not fuck with me,” Nigel warns him again, before stuffing his cigarette between his lips to stop himself from the flow of words that feels a curious counterpart to Adam’s own torrent. He waits. He waits uneasily. He waits and paces and bites back demands and questions. He waits and he paces and he stays quiet and he tries not to hit the wall and call the whole thing off until the moment that Adam grins, a quick and crooked little thing.

“What? What is it?”

“No one ever changes their default password,” Adam observes, and Nigel isn’t sure whether he wants to hug the kid or smack him. He settles for crushing his cigarette out against the floor.

Adam takes a long, leisurely drink of soda before setting the can down with a snap and returning his fingers to the keyboard, the clicking endless as he enters code after code, enters the access matrix, makes the necessary adjustments. He likes computers. He’s good with computers. Computers make sense in a mathematical, predictable way, they have rules that they follow and cannot break.

He ignores Nigel cursing beneath his breath, he ignores the man on the floor, he ignores everything but the numbers on the screen, the rhythmic typing of his own hands, the way his heart matches up to every fifth stroke and beats in time with it.

Line after line unlocks another access point, another card, until all that’s left is to convince the system the adjustments were never made, that nothing at all was altered. He adjusts the control lists, twists the main coding, re-enters the password and sits back, curling one leg beneath himself on the chair before reaching for his - now empty - can of drink.

He taps it against the table before setting it in his lap.

“I’m in,” Adam tells the other man, waits for the predicted growl that precedes his answer.

“Just now? You’re just now fucking in?”

“I’m in,” Adam repeats, turning to look at the man over his shoulder. “I’m done. Which means you’re in. And I would like another soda,” he holds up the can and vaguely waves it in front of the other man. “Please.”

Nigel drops his hand and lifts it to check the time. Altogether, five minutes elapsed, and the entire building now theirs for the pillaging. Without thinking, he snares Adam around the neck in a quick embrace, kisses the top of his head, and mutters, “As many as you fucking want.”

“Just one,” Adam corrects him, and Nigel releases him just as he begins to squirm loose.

“Stay here. Cameras are off?”

“Everything is off.”

“But you can watch?”

“Sure, it’s just not recording.”

“Good,” Nigel sighs. “When you see us coming back, start it up again and then we’re fucking gone, got it?”

Adam nods, blinking wide. “Don’t forget the soda.”

Nigel swears once more, and is gone.

Down the hall, out the door, through a spacious and empty storage block, gathering his men as he goes. He keeps his hand on his sidearm, clasp unhitched from the holster tucked against his ribs. Three exits, leftmost - “Go,” he hisses, watching as they do. A moment more to linger, to ensure that their footsteps and presence hasn’t attracted the daytime skeleton crew, and as they ascend the stairs and work open the newly unlocked office door, luck is on their side.

No one.

Defunct cameras.

Disabled alarms.

Disarmed locks.

“As much as you can fucking carry,” Nigel tells his men. Money held here is unmarked and taken, the parcels of heroin neatly packaged and far finer shit than what’s being doctored down in the further reaches of the warehouse beneath them. He does not take, but after a moment of consideration, grins viciously and - careful to turn away from the cameras that run, even if they don’t record - Nigel unzips and relieves himself against the broad desk.

It isn’t about the money or the drugs, really, so much as the personal satisfaction of fucking things up for somebody else.

Laden, they go again, back the way they came, Nigel careful to close every door behind him to be locked again when they return. He stops, though, just before the last hallway where Adam can be found, swearing roughly as he stops off to buy another fucking soda, careful to hold his hand in the dispenser and catch it so that it doesn’t make a sound.

Adam is watching the man on the floor again, still blinded and bound and deaf to the world, knowing that he will be in hell once they leave, once the security is reset - with a few choice adjustments - and once his employers return to find the damage done to their stock and stores. Adam taps his fingers against the empty can over and over to hear the sound change the closer he gets to the open top of it.

The cameras flicker silent against every screen and he can see in his peripheral how quickly everyone works, an efficient team, like a beehive. He considers that for all his brashness, Nigel is a good leader for them, they follow him without question or contestation, seem to split all profits evenly. A pirate code rather than one of thieves, he supposes.

He follows Nigel through two cameras before the door swings open again and another soda is set to the desk with a sharp thud. Adam sets the empty one beside it, leans forward to adjust something in the code and execute the command.

“It’s on a timer. Three minutes,” Adam tells him, standing, pocketing the empty can and clicking open the new one with a hiss. “I’ve told the system to reset.”

Nigel’s mouth opens, eyes darting to the can that Adam has somehow fit into his pocket, and he starts to ask but thinks better of it. Pleased enough with how it’s gone, Nigel simply ruffles the kid’s hair. Pleased with how it’s gone _so far_ , he reminds himself, because if the fucking driver isn’t there they’re all fucking dead.

“Go,” Nigel tells him again, following up after Adam, after the others who have already gone, to ensure that there’s no one behind them.

And the men split, just outside the door, an easy break and there - god save the fucking queen - there is their driver, and Nigel doesn’t have to tell Adam this time to get in the car.

“Fucking genius,” Nigel sighs as they peel out. He pushes his hands back through his hair and settles heavy into the seat, not bothering now to button his jacket to keep the guns hidden. “You, kid, are a fucking genius.”

“I’m good with computers,” Adam reminds him, but he is smiling, the praise warm against his skin even if it is inaccurate. His IQ is not enough to qualify for genius, though he has taken tests several times to see. Perhaps he will remain on the border forever. Adam wonders if that’s a bad thing; the statistics for the deaths and suicides of geniuses in the world are staggering, he doesn’t need those odds.

“You fucking are that,” Nigel agrees, rubbing a hand over his face as the car slinks through the early morning streets, dawn just on the horizon, barely warming the sky. Adam allows himself to take in the man beside him, lingering on the guns, the weapons he has hidden, the tattoo on his neck in detail. He’s a rough man, vulgar, entirely uncouth, but here he’s settled and softened, and it’s a rather pleasing transformation to observe.

Adam finishes his soda and taps his fingers against the rim of this one, now, wondering if he’ll manage to get back to sleep when he’s returned home - or returns home - with so much sugar in his system. Maybe it doesn’t matter. Not much to do today beyond let his mind run over the last few hours in detail, commit them to memory, toss away the parts he finds unfavourable.

“Now what?” He asks after a while, the car making its way back to the apartment, not Adam’s home. The sky had grown lighter.

“What, now what,” asks Nigel in response, slumped down nearly horizontal in the seat as he turns an eye towards Adam beside him.

“Now what happens?”

“Now you come back, sit and wait for a little bit while we sort out our shit, and I pay you,” Nigel answers, running the side of his thumb against his bottom lip. “And then you go.” He draws a breath, holds it, and wonders where, exactly Adam will go. What he’ll do. How he’ll manage it when he seems so entirely capable and utterly helpless all at once. It isn’t Nigel’s problem, though, and he sighs slow again. The kid has done well enough on his own, and why the fuck should Nigel care, anyway? Adrenaline, he figures, the thrill of the heist pulling at strange parts of his brain.

Fuck it.

“Done deal,” Nigel adds, turning to watch out the window.

Adam frowns but it’s not in more than thought. He allows the words to sink in, works through them to sift them where they belong, before turning to look out the window as well, mirroring Nigel’s posture as he slowly slips down the seat and sets his knees against the one before him.

“You kissed me,” he says, turning back to Nigel again as the other stills, takes his time turning his head.

“What?”

“By the computer. You kissed me.”

“I did fucking what?”

Adam’s eyes narrow. “You are not stupid, and you remember. Why did you do it?”

“ I j-” A pause, a moment to swallow down the expletives that want to escape and fill the car, a moment to set his breathing back on track. This fucking kid… “I was fucking grateful.”

“Was?”

“Am, fucking am, Jesus.”

“I thought kissing was for affection,” Adam comments, curious, now, entirely impassive towards Nigel’s obvious discomfort with the subject matter, ignoring the soft snort from the driver at the conversation happening behind him.

He stares at the kid, disbelieving. “It can be, or it can be - it can be a lot of fucking things. Fucking family, you kiss your family for the same reason you kiss girls?” Nigel doesn’t wait for an answer. “Fuck no, you don’t. So if a guy kisses another guy -” Another snort from the front elicits a swift kick from where Nigel sits, into the back of the seat, and he leans forward, voice low. “Another fucking sound out of you and they’ll be picking bits of your brain off the fucking highway.”

Silence pervades the car for a moment, and Nigel presses his tongue between his lips. “The top of your head, Adam, that’s all it was. You can’t go around saying shit like that.”

“Saying what?” Adam tilts his head. “You did kiss me, does it matter where?”

“It fucking matters where. Fuck, you don’t have a fucking filter at all, do you, between your fucking brain and your mouth?”

“No, I have Asperger’s Syndrome,” Adam replies, and it’s so calm, so normal, that it stutters the other man into silence. “It makes it difficult to process social situations and understand cues, I talk too much and I know that a lot of the time the things I do say are confusing to others, so I do my best to explain and talk more.”

A shrug, just one side, again, before Adam rests his head back against the seat, a small smile curling his lips. “I’m not good with people, I’m not good with being social. But at least I don’t swear.”

“What, fucking ever?”

“Never,” Adam confirms.

“Not once in your entire fucking life?”

Adam holds his breath, eyes settling on the roof of the car as he considers. “No.”

“Fuck me,” Nigel responds, letting his gaze narrow on Adam for a moment more before the hint of a smile crinkles them in the corners. “I’ll do it enough for both of us then.”

“You don’t have to for me, because I don’t do it at all,” Adam reminds him, and Nigel merely snorts in response. He doesn’t know the condition - _syndrome_ \- Adam has but it’s well enough to know that there’s a reason for why he acts the way he does, that he isn’t just strange. His attachment to computers suddenly makes sense, in turn - no expressions or words to interpret and misconstrue, but just a bunch of fucking 1’s and 0’s that somehow work together.

Facts, rather than feelings.

Nigel can’t say he disagrees with that.

They meet up with another man when they arrive at the apartment - no more talk of kissing in the meantime - and Nigel lets Adam wait in the bedroom while they discuss what was taken elsewhere from the warehouse. Low murmurs and little tension, surprisingly, until Nigel motions and is handed over a paper bag, perfectly ordinary. The man goes, and Nigel waits until the door is shut before going to Adam.

“Your cut,” he tells him. “Check it if you like - I won’t be insulted.”

“People who are pushing to prove their honesty are usually dishonest,” Adam points out, taking the bag and holding it in both hands. “But you swear enough to cancel the concept out. I won’t count it.”

Nigel’s only response is to snort, pull out another cigarette from his crumpled pack, and light up. Adam just considers the burning tip of the thing before directing his eyes away.

“You smoke a lot.”

“You teaching me how to live?”

“Smoking less will help you live longer,” Adam counters, finds a headshake his only reply before Nigel takes a long deliberate drag of smoke and bares his teeth as he sighs it out. Adam holds out his hand again, as he had when he’d met Nigel the first time, now he does it in parting, as outside the sun comes up over the city.

“Goodbye, Nigel.”

It seems so strange to end so suddenly. Weeks of planning and anticipation, nerves strung too short and fraying from bringing in this new kid to do whatever the fuck wizardry he did, and in a matter of a couple hours, it’s finished.

Done deal.

He shakes Adam’s hand, despite the peculiar formality of it now, muttering, “It’s not a fucking job interview.”

“What?”

“Nothing,” Nigel sighs. “Dumb joke. Get the fuck out,” he tells him, not unkindly. “And you can ditch the phone. Trashcan, whatever.”

Adam just nods, a quick and courteous thing, removing the phone from his pocket to drop into the trashcan piled high with bottles in the kitchen. Nigel watches it slip and settle against the empty glass and presses his tongue against his incisor to stop himself from changing his mind, insisting that Adam take it with him, just in case.

Just in case fucking what?

“Thanks again,” Nigel tells him, but as he looks up, Adam’s already gone.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nigel drops a hand from the wall, calloused fingers grasping Adam’s jaw. Lips tugging together, parting, closing and opening again and again with shortening breaths before Nigel shoves himself against the younger man, trapping him against the wall with a knee between his legs. His tongue presses into Adam’s mouth and grazes his, stroking slow together despite how fast their breaths mingle, and all Nigel can hear past the thick buzz swarming in his head is _you kissed me_ , _you kissed me_ and when they finally part gasping Nigel keeps hold of Adam’s face and laughs, low.
> 
> “So that’s how it is then."

“What the fuck, Adam.”

Adam closes his eyes, gathers his breath, and reopens them, letters and images on the screen that make little sense to Nigel standing behind him.

“Adam, what the fuck.”

“You’re not actually asking me anything I can answer.”

“I’m fucking not? I’m asking you what the fuck is going on.”

“You didn’t, you just -”

“Don’t tell me what I fucking just, tell me what the fuck is -”

“I don’t know,” Adam answers. “Not yet, I don’t know what the… what’s going on, you have to -”

“I have to fucking what?” exclaims Nigel, loud enough that Adam tilts his head, wincing.

“Stop distracting me,” he breathes, a flurry of movement over the keys.

It’s been too long, Nigel’s fucking sure of that at least. Nothing he does should take this long. It means something’s gone wrong, he can feel it like the crackle in the air across his skin before a lightning storm. Nigel drums his fingers against the back of Adam’s chair until the younger man stops typing, and Nigel forces himself to step away.

A breath.

Two.

“What the fuck is wrong, Adam,” drawls Nigel, dragging the vowels out in irritation, until Adam snaps, hands lifting from the keyboard.

“I don’t speak Norwegian!”

“It didn’t fucking matter before.”

“Well it matters now,” Adam replies, tense, fingers flexing over and over until the motion can’t be comfortable, and Nigel lets out a long patient breath and turns away again, punches the door frame instead of the boy at the computer. And again. And again. Until Adam makes a sound in his throat and Nigel stops.

The kid has proven his worth, in the last few months, job after job with minimal requirement beyond silence and soda, and soda was always easy to get.

They’ve started moving the shit they got on Adam’s first gig, taking the kid’s advice as to how the markets are stacking up to send them to Asia and the Pacific, finding profits tripling there than if they had kept the stuff in the United States. In two months they owned the major heroin routes from America to Australia. In two months they had made a lot of people very angry and had spent more money than any of them had ever seen. In three they had a contract with Africa that was too good to be true.

Perhaps that’s fucking why.

Perhaps that’s fucking _why_ they are stuck in this mess and Adam is chewing his thumbnail like a little kid, eyes skimming the screen much faster than Nigel thinks will allow him to see anything.

Routing through at least four countries before the shit gets where it needs to go, untraceable, untracked, weights adjusted on containers so no one is the wiser, product removed as efficiently as it is brought into the country and sent out of it.

“I think they lost the container,” comes the tired voice from the computer, and Nigel wonders if it’s worth breaking his hand over this. “There are a lot of ‘no’s on the screen, all over the screen, every few words. Like your swearing.”

“I thought you didn’t fucking speak fucking Norwegian!”

“A no is a no in every language, Nigel, I can’t find it.”

“Adam,” Nigel groans, and every part of his name pulls from the hollow sucking hole that the man feels opening in his belly. “This is bullshit and you fucking know it, Adam.”

The younger man doesn’t disagree, chewing his nail again. “I’ve checked every ship that’s left from New York to Stavanger for the last three months,” he says, adding with a humorless laugh, “and it only went out two weeks ago.”

“Did it? Did it go out? Maybe it’s still there. Maybe the fucking dogs got to it and we’re fucking fucked, Adam.”

“It was entered as received and shipped from New York exactly eleven days ago.”

Nigel saves his hand for now, gripping the door frame hard enough that a splinter lodges itself beneath his fingernail and he hisses a foul oath that forces Adam’s eyes closed again. The swearing hasn’t gotten any more tolerable, not helped by the failure to locate the missing shipping container, but even when things go perfectly, Nigel still swarms and spits and curses. Adam has tried to get Nigel to let him work in peace, but the man insists on being there, less a lack of trust and more a strange familiarity between them. 

For all his coarseness, he has - on more than one job - looked out for Adam especially, though the younger man has rarely needed help. A particularly boisterous meeting was quieted - with threats of mild violence, but no one seemed to mind - when the sound began to rattle Adam. A doubtful counterpart who blamed Adam for a misstep - entirely not his fault - was summarily assaulted into submission for laying a hand on him.

He has looked out for Adam in his own way, but the _swearing_...

“Fucking whore-mother of Christ, Adam, do you have any fucking idea -”

“Yes,” interjects Adam, shoulders drawn tight now. “Yes, I know exactly how much was in the container, I know the exact weight of it, I know exactly - down to the US dollar, after conversion - how much money should have come from it. Yes, Nigel, I _know_.”

Nigel returns to him, a sudden surge of energy that brings a bloodied hand down beside the laptop - just the one that Adam had asked for, capable of routing through Tor networks to mask their movement, a beautiful machine that like every one that Nigel buys for him will end up broken and discarded.

“Another port, maybe, some fucking storm made them have to dock somewhere else.”

“Bergen, Haugesund, Sandnes all show no results.”

“Fucking Oslo, then!”

“It isn’t there,” Adam breathes, running his hands over his face, across his mouth, before he moves to stand from beneath Nigel looming over him, stepping back - far back - with a shrug.

Nigel doesn’t let him get far, hands clenching into fists at his sides, hunched shoulders and a snarl curling up over sharp teeth. “How the fuck does an entire shipping container go missing, Adam? How?”

“It could be a mess in the paperwork, someone misfiled or mistyped, sometimes New York can be misheard as Newark on the phone and -”

“Don’t give me fucking excuses, Adam, give me solutions.”

“I don’t know.”

“Where the fuck could it have gone?”

Adam shifts further back, shoulders up, hands trembling before he sets them under his arms and concentrates on breathing, walking back till he hits a wall and suddenly there is no space before him, just Nigel, in his strangely patterned shirt that has no matching colors, with his smell of alcohol and cigarette smoke and strangely clean sweat, and he is right there, right where Adam needs to breathe and it isn’t helping, it is not helping at all that he keeps asking the same question Adam has told him he doesn’t know the answer to.

“Where -”

“I don’t FUCKING KNOW, Nigel!” Adam says, tone pitching for a moment, before he takes a breath to apologize for the curse, to tell Nigel to shut up - something, _anything_ \- and finds Nigel pressed against him instead.

Both arms to the wall, on either side of Adam’s head, there’s no room for air, no room to move, no room for anything but Nigel, whose brow comes to rest against Adam’s own. Dominance, exasperation, utter exhaustion, he needs to fucking know, needs to know about the goddamn container and needs to know about -

“Adam,” Nigel breathes, close enough that their noses touch, his eyes closed as he speaks in the quietest tone that he can manage, hands snarled into fists. “Say it went to Newark instead. Say it went from fucking Newark to fucking Newfoundland to fucking who gives a fuck. Can whoever stumbles into that fucking container track it back to us?”

“I don’t know if it did, I don’t know where it is,” Adam insists quietly, and his breath hitches, enough that he tilts his head, feels Nigel so close, so there, so oddly, unusually welcome after being in Adam’s space and his mind for so many months now. He swallows, a thick sound, hears the protest coming before it does. “I know you didn’t ask, I just don’t know where it is I don’t -”

“Can,” Nigel sighs, “they fucking track it back to us?”

“There is nothing in any paperwork that holds any names that are real,” Adam tells him softly, “and none of those aliases are directly linked to any of us and -”

“You’re fucking sure.”

“I’m - I’m sure, Nigel,” answers Adam. “I checked it myself, again just now, the shipping documents that were filed when it was outbound all show it attributed to -”

“Adam,” Nigel sighs, tilting his head a little, foreheads pressed together.

“I don’t know, I don’t -”

“Did you just fucking swear?” asks Nigel, laughing.

Adam makes a sound, entirely displeased, pulled from him far enough to be deeper than his voice is usually, enough that he can _feel_ it, and then he’s pressing his lips to Nigel’s to make him stop to make him just… 

...stop.

There is white noise in Adam’s ears, a humming and a hissing and a current he is fairly sure he can feel from his chest up to his throat and higher still to his ears and it doesn’t matter because this, actually, feels very good. It’s very different to kissing a girl, it’s rougher, from stubble from obstinance, from whatever the fuck Nigel is made of but it feels grounding, it feels good, and Adam only pulls back to draw in a breath before doing it again, in case the man whose mouth works as fast as Adam’s mind decides he wants to open it again for something other than this.

Nigel drops a hand from the wall, calloused fingers grasping Adam’s jaw. Lips tugging together, parting, closing and opening again and again with shortening breaths before Nigel shoves himself against the younger man, trapping him against the wall with a knee between his legs. His tongue presses into Adam’s mouth and grazes his, stroking slow together despite how fast their breaths mingle, and all Nigel can hear past the thick buzz swarming in his head is _you kissed me_ , _you kissed me_ and when they finally part gasping Nigel keeps hold of Adam’s face and laughs, low.

“So that’s how it is then,” he hums, hooded eyes darting over the blotchy blush that lights up Adam’s cheeks, that darken his lips still damp with spit.

“You wouldn’t stop swearing,” insists Adam, mouth parting again as Nigel strokes a thumb across it.

“That’s what you do when people say a bad fucking word?”

“No - I - yes -”

“Are you fucking queer, Adam?”

His eyes widen, blue and bright. Swallowing roughly, Adam narrows his gaze in mirror to Nigel’s own, though the press of the older man’s thumb against his bottom lip spills a shiver down his spine. “No. Are you?”

Nigel snorts. “No.”

“But you -”

“But I fucking what, Adam?”

“You’re sexually aroused,” Adam notes, as matter-of-factly as he’d discussed the fucking shipping containers and Nigel huffs a laugh, beer and cigarettes on his breath, against Adam’s cheek.

“Yeah, I guess I am.”

“Me too,” answers the younger man, and he grins before Nigel’s kiss ensnares him again.

This is easy, this doesn’t need thinking to be involved anywhere. Lips press to lips, tongues taste different, the temperature is just a few degrees off and it feels interesting, it feels good, and Adam brings his hands up to rest heavy against Nigel’s shirt, just curled in it as the other rocks against him in a seemingly thoughtless motion.

Adam wonders why it’s truly such a big deal with a man kisses another man, why it suddenly instigates a territorial ritual that does nothing more than make both parties look stupid. _I didn’t, fuck._ It doesn’t matter, why should it matter? Adam feels the panic that had pulled him taut, that had pushed him to stand, to walk, to shrug and pace leaving him as he channels it elsewhere, wonders if it’s the same for Nigel, if he should just do this next time the man makes an aim for the wall or the door.

Nigel lets go of Adam’s face and presses his hand to the wall again, snarling between their mouths as another languid undulation brings their bodies together, hips alone enough to keep Adam pinned to the wall, and his thigh hot between the younger man’s legs. Nigel snares Adam’s bottom lip between his teeth, grins when he whimpers surprise, and it only widens when the soft sound builds into a moan as Nigel sucks against his mouth.

He has, in whatever fucking way, enjoyed Adam’s company. More than Nigel enjoys anyone else’s company, anyway. Adam is brutally smart - far more than Nigel himself, he can admit. Well-mannered. Mostly blissfully fucking quiet but when he’s not it’s always either vital or fascinating, and Nigel has found himself up late more nights than he cares to admit now - right now, with Adam grasping his shirt and making needy noises against his mouth - sustaining conversation just to pick at even a fraction of his remarkable mind.

Sure, he’s fucking strange. He’s a weird kid, high-strung and with a suffocatingly dry sense of humor if he bothers to share any. But normal is fucking dull. Nigel can have normal. Has had normal. Normal gives him a tedious blowjob and then pretends it means something afterward. Normal doesn’t converse with computers and drink a shocking amount of cola and and kiss him like this. Normal has never fucking kissed Nigel like this.

He catches Adam around his thighs and hoists him higher, driving his knee against the wall and his thigh hard against Adam’s groin, lips parting on a smoke-roughened moan as his eyes open again, to follow the movement of the younger man’s fingers as they twine through his hair.

Nigel sucks his lips into his mouth, and shakes his head. “That fucking container, Adam - at least a fucking million, at _least_ , how the flying _fuck_ do you lose a shipping container that’s bigger than this fucking shithole apartment -”

Adam just makes another of those sounds that don’t sound like his own, low and pleased, and he _shivers_ , fucking shivers, before settling a wide-eyed, pupil-blown stare at the man in front of him. Actually looking at him. Not through. Not around.

“Do you always talk through sex?” he asks, and it’s so matter of fact, so ridiculously casual, that Nigel snorts, shakes his head, laughs again and murmurs something he is fairly sure Adam can make out even without hearing it properly. But he finds hands resisting when he presses close again, turned to push the heels of them against Nigel’s chest, and the older man regards them before lifting his eyes.

“You want me to fucking stop?”

“I want you to figure out if you want to talk about the container or touch me,” Adam explains instead. “It’s hard for me to work on two things simultaneously when one is so distracting.”

“You lost -”

“Technically we don’t know who lost it. We might not have lost it. I just can’t find it. I will find it,” Adam says, quick words that grow breathier as Nigel continues to press his knee up against Adam until he closes his eyes and grits his teeth and his hands turn to soft gripping and not harsh pushing, again.

The words are comforting and infuriating all at once, balanced enough that Nigel can manage to quell his temper, especially when a far better use of all that energy is pulling at his shirt and pleading wordless to be kissed again. He rocks his knee up against Adam, humming deep in his chest when the younger man rubs against him, and he brings a hand down to sweep Adam’s hair back from his face and watch as the curls bounce back into his eyes.

“Say that again,” Nigel purrs, eyes narrowing in pleasure as Adam blinks at him.

“I don’t know who lost it, we might not -”

“Not all of it, Adam, fuck,” answers the older man, turning Adam’s head aside with a rough nuzzle to bare his neck.

Adam slips his arms, with a few uncertain adjustments, up over Nigel’s shoulders, and they clutch tighter as Nigel pulls kisses against his neck. “Which part?”

“The last fucking part.”

“I’ll find it,” Adam sighs, eyes closing.

“Thank fuck, Adam. Thank fucking christ, now I can stop fucking worrying about it because -”

“Because I’ll find it,” he repeats, swallowing back a whimper as Nigel brings his hand down Adam’s chest, fingers teasing up across his pale belly.

“Now I can fucking focus,” Nigel mutters, and neither is convinced of it.

Adam doesn’t look when Nigel’s fingers work his shirt higher and higher until there is cool air against his stomach and warm fingers drawing in tickling motions there a moment later. His own hands don’t fumble so much as genuinely cling on, pleased, distracted, warmed by this.

It’s been a while.

And never with a man before, though Adam wonders if that truly matters.

He wonders what Nigel’s tattoo tastes like.

He lifts his arms when he needs to for the shirt to come away, Nigel not caring at all for buttons, while Adam brings his own hands, finally, to actually bother with them for Nigel. Adam is harder, now, shameless in his rutting against Nigel’s thigh, wanting to suggest they move to the bed, or even the floor, somewhere where it wouldn’t matter when his legs gave out because he’s fairly sure they soon will.

He makes another quiet, needy sound and pushes Nigel’s shirt from his shoulders, down to his arms where it bunches at the elbows before the man snorts and shoves it away.

“Look at you, all fucking impatient.”

“If we ever get to fucking I might be patient,,” Adam responds tersely and finds Nigel laughing against him before he swears - always inevitably swears - and kisses Adam again.

A curious sense of humor, odd as the rest of the younger man, but one that Nigel has enjoyed seeing emerge in quips and remarks that go over the heads of the men they often work alongside. Sometimes Nigel has wondered, when he laughs and Adam shoots him a quick crooked grin, if he isn’t making jokes just for Nigel to hear. It’s a nice thought, to imagine he does, their own private language and emerging understanding of each other despite their vast differences.

And this, now, more secrets to share between them, when there are few enough others in the world with whom they’d truly bother.

“Is that what you want, then?” Nigel asks, a throaty near-whisper made rough by desire and too many cigarettes.

“Is - uh, is what, what I want?”

The curse ratchets a shiver through Nigel, rips goosebumps down his skin and up the back of his neck, a perverse pleasure in hearing the staid and buttoned-down Adam swear so freely after giving Nigel such relentless shit about it. “Do you want to fuck?” repeats Nigel slowly, and displeasure tightens Adam’s mouth into a thin line.

“Yes,” he answers. “Yes, I like doing - that.”

“You’ve done it before?”

The displeasure grows and though Adam starts to shove Nigel away in irritation, the older man holds him fast. “I’ve had sex before,” insists Adam. “I’m not a kid, I’m not - I know what I want. I’m - ah,” he gasps, a little sound, as Nigel rocks his thigh harder where Adam is pinned to the wall. “I’m aroused and I want to -”

Nigel grabs Adam by the legs and lifts the younger man against him, toes dragging on the floor as he carries Adam towards the unmade bed and thin mattress where Nigel sleeps, when he does. “This apartment is a fucking shithole,” Nigel mutters, moving atop Adam as he lays him back, and pressing his mouth beneath the curve of Adam’s jaw to feel him swallow roughly.

“There’s water damage on the ceiling,” Adam agrees, eyes upward now from where he’s laid across his back, but he tilts his eyes down to watch Nigel’s body rock against his own, hips joined now to rub against each other. Curious fingers curl in the thick hair on Nigel’s chest, follow over whipcord muscle and the ridges of his ribs, before he finds the long scar that runs up Nigel’s side.

He doesn't ask, but he catalogues. It would have been very difficult to stop it bleeding, and from the lack of clean stitches he is fairly sure Nigel did this himself. He splays his hand against it, the scar tissue always sensitive, thin, warm, feels Nigel shudder and press closer the further up Adam's fingers get against it. Then Adam arches his back, pushes his hips up, groans, and feels teeth against his skin.

This, too, different with how it has been with women. They find Adam interesting, beautiful, hard to understand but never _wanting_ in bed. But even there it is soft fingers and delicate lips where this is harsher, harder, faster... it is wonderfully distracting and Adam doesn’t hold his sounds back, doesn’t hold back drawing nails up Nigel's back, pulling his hair, laughing when his stubble tickles against Adam's clean-shaven neck.

And rubbing, always rubbing, closer and closer until Adam's breathing hitches a certain way and Nigel curses, sits back to work his pants off, baring Adam before he bares himself, and Adam looks his fill. Larger, darker, leaner, but not intimidating, not here. Adam licks his bottom lip, swallows, directs his eyes up to catch Nigel's look before sitting closer on the bed to touch him again, curious fingers and warm breath and far from inexperienced when he finally grasps Nigel's cock to stroke it.

He groans, head ducked to watch Adam’s hands - hands that Nigel has seen fly across keyboards, solder circuit boards, tap out code that looks like fucking nonsense. They are softer than Nigel expected, but strong, accustomed to touching himself perhaps but adapting with a turn of his wrist, and again when Nigel sighs harshly from it, shuddering.

“Fuck, Adam,” murmurs Nigel, before his mouth finds the younger man’s chest again, sleek and hairless, his teeth find a nipple, his tongue strokes against it. Adam makes a sound that grabs at something primal in the older man, forces his hips to buck hard against the tightening touch around him.

Nigel prefers women, generally, likes the look and smell and feel of them, but even still, it’s rare enough that he finds someone with whom he wants to bother with all the fucking fuss of getting somewhere private enough, the fucking hassle of what comes after. It isn’t worth his time when his hand is readily available, but Adam - fucking Adam. Despite what’s between his legs, he’s fascinating, and easy enough on the eyes… and ears, when he makes those little sounds that ring echoing through every bone in Nigel’s body.

He’s fucking beautiful, actually, if Nigel felt like describing a man as beautiful.

Fingernails dragging sharp over pale skin, Nigel reaches to take Adam in hand and stroke. How the fucking rest of this is supposed to go, Nigel isn’t wholly certain yet, but this at least makes sense to him, and he watches with hooded eyes as Adam bites his lip and releases it from between bright white teeth with a whimper.

If anything, it’s a fucking good show. There’s porn, there’s playing, and there’s this. Adam is not a kid, that much is obvious, but as he has no filter when he speaks, he has far less when he shows his pleasure; vocal and warm and delighted in his shivering, he arches up into every stroke, draws his knees and spreads his legs and doesn’t at all care if he gets tangled in the sheet or bumps up against the body above him.

He enjoys it.

Makes all the more fucking sexy to watch.

And he doesn’t slack, hand moving just as comfortably over Nigel, twisting on the upstroke, sliding back the foreskin to make the man let out a plethora of expletives against Adam’s sweat-damp skin. If there is a rest to go to, Nigel doubts they will go to it today, both already panting and so close as they are. Heads ducked, lips meeting once in a while for a bite, a turn, a slide of mouths together.

It’s good. It’s fucking good.

“You’re gonna make me fucking cum, Adam,” he rumbles low against the younger man’s ear, watching as something like delight, mischievous and genuine, flickers through bright blue eyes. Nigel’s grin spreads wide, mouth pressed breathless to Adam’s ruddy cheek, but it falters into a heavy groan when Adam’s lips find his neck instead. He kisses just softly, little things down the length of the woman inked into Nigel’s throat, but it’s almost too much. Adam knows what he’s doing but does it with such an innocence that Nigel has to hold himself back - from taking him entirely, from finishing immediately, from saying things he’s sure as shit he’ll regret if he does.

So he kisses him, instead, a deep and plunging thing with tongues tangled, enough distraction in smothering Adam’s soft lips beneath his own that Nigel can tug Adam’s hand away from him, and take them both in his own hand instead. Velvety skin pulled taut, rubbing hot friction together as he strokes them both, Adam reaches again and Nigel stops him, holding Adam’s wrist above his head and leaning back enough to watch him arch and moan, helpless and needy.

There’s an animal satisfaction to it, not the soft bendable curves of a woman beneath him but harder angles, a tenacious strength that Nigel feels beneath his hand when Adam’s fingers curl into a fist. It is rough. It is satisfying. It’s sex that feels like the cigarettes that scald his throat and the whiskey that burns it smooth again.

It is sex that Nigel never once considered he would have with Adam fucking Raki.

But they draw closer and closer, coil and twist and then Adam moans, head back and lips just parted enough to show gritted teeth beneath, and cums hot against the two of them, shuddering through it, smiling, eyes closed like a cat warmed by the sun. His cheeks are pink, just over his nose, too, showing freckles that don’t show up otherwise and he looks younger.

Nigel ducks his head to bite against the pale skin again, enough to leave a mark, enough for the kid to go home to wherever he lives, see it in the mirror, see it when he looks down in the morning. See it and remember, and fucking do it again.

Again would be very welcome.

It isn’t long until the older man succumbs to his own pleasure, slick palm and those little sounds, those _fucking_ little sounds Adam still makes, contented and humming, turning beneath Nigel pressed on top of him. He wonders if Adam will just go to sleep, just roll over and curl up, and thinks that if he does, then he fucking may as well. But Adam just licks his lips, swallows, parts them again with a sigh and directs his eyes to Nigel properly, hooded but open.

“That was good,” he says.

Nigel lifts his eyes from the thick white stickiness draped between his fingers, dripping warm but cooling quick against his skin, and he wipes his hand off against the tangled sheets. “It was pretty fucking good,” he agrees, working to catch his breath, laying heavy now over the younger man.

His heart begins to slow but as it does Nigel realizes he isn’t wholly sure what else can happen, what else _should_ happen. It was a sudden thing, unexpected and rough and necessary, but now that both are spent and sweaty and Adam is still there, Nigel wonders if he’s ever known what to do beyond this point. Normally he’d tell her - whoever her was that night - to go. Light a cigarette and have a beer and fall asleep, but he doesn’t want Adam to go. Not yet, anyway.

With hesitation, uncharacteristically uncertain, Nigel leans a little lower, and makes a sound when Adam meets his lips again. They part slower now, press and close tightly together but without any urgency, warmth caught and held between them, and Nigel runs a hand back through Adam’s curls, grasping softly.

He doesn’t want him to go at all.

So Nigel slides from on top of him, skips the usual first step of What Happens Now, and reaches to take up his cigarettes from the nightstand and spark one with a click of his lighter. He savors the drag, deep enough to make him dizzy and build a hum in his ears, and he offers it to Adam.

Who of course, declines, with a shake of his head.

Nigel’s eyes narrow in amusement. “What the fuck, Adam.”

“Still not a question,” Adam answers, fidgeting onto his side and tucking an arm beneath his head.

“You don’t want it?”

“I don’t smoke.”

“Everyone smokes after sex, Adam, fucking Christ.”

“I don’t,” Adam answers, reasonably. “So not _everyone_ does.”

Nigel draws up a knee to rest his elbow against, cigarette trickling smoke from between his fingers, and he spans a hand through Adam’s hair again, affectionate. It’s a fair point, even if Adam is a shit for making it, and Nigel tugs his curls a little, chest warming with another drag and the pleasure in seeing Adam grin against the flattened pillow.

It’s nice, warm, just being touched like this, and Adam lets his eyes droop, though he doesn’t close them, watching Nigel where he sits, with his scars and his cigarette, his own expression softened from his usual grimace, his usual snarl and growling. He’s older, Adam realized, than he makes himself seem, or perhaps it’s just the bags under his eyes from lack of sleep and too many drugs to help stay awake.

He reaches out to brush fingers over his thigh, settle all but one against the bed in a soft fist as he just taps a binary pattern against Nigel’s leg before curling that finger down too and taking a breath, letting it out again.

“I can’t sleep in places I don’t know," Adam tells him, pushing himself to sit up, stretching his arms up over his head, entirely unashamed of his nakedness - not that there is anything, at all, in Nigel’s eyes, to be ashamed of - as he stands to make his way to the bathroom, run cool water and clean himself up. When he comes out again he bends to retrieve his underwear, his pants.

“I’m going to go home.”

Nigel just blinks, brows furrowing, the muscles beneath his eyes tensing in displeasure.

“You can’t fucking go.”

“If I sleep here I will wake up here, logically, and I can’t wake up in places I have not slept in before, I get nervous, and then I get upset and you won’t want to be near me when I get that way. I don’t want you to be near me when I get that way, I hate getting that way, so I’m going to go.”

Nigel's gaze sharpens, an angry pull sucked off his cigarette before he stubs it against the wall and flicks the filter to the floor. "That's fucking shit, Adam. Say what you really fucking mean."

Blinking, Adam's lips part. "I can't wake up in places I haven't slept before -"

"That's fucking _bullshit_ ," snarls Nigel, unfurling from the bed to stand. "If you can't fucking wake up somewhere, you can't fucking sleep somewhere, so how the fuck do you sleep anywhere else -"

"I don't," answers Adam, a nervous laugh catching the end of his words. "I sleep at my apartment, I know my apartment -"

Nigel looms near over him, a wounded animal lashing out rather than showing this sudden weakness. "Say it, Adam. Don't bullshit me, just say you fucking regret it," he growls, fists clenching in resistance to shoving him, pushing him, forcing out the answer he wants - expects - to hear.

Adam blinks, frown deepening, and sets a hand against Nigel’s chest before changing his mind and pulling it away, grasping his shirt instead. He takes a breath, releases it, grounds himself by watching the pulse hammer against Nigel’s throat.

“I know you’re angry and I don’t know how to explain it to you so you’re not angry,” Adam mumbles, and feels - physically feels - the pressure ease up from the man before him, as though with a breath he has effectively taken a step back without moving at all. Adam looks up, grateful, and chews the inside of his lip before trying again.

“You think I want to leave because I don’t want to have sex with you again," he says, watches the way Nigel’s jaw works to suggest he guessed entirely correctly. Adam nods, just once, for himself, and directs his eyes just over Nigel’s shoulder. “That’s not true, I liked having sex with you. I liked how your hands felt on me. I liked how you kissed my neck, just there,” he points, brings his hand down to grip his shirt again. "I liked it a lot and I want to do it again. But my mind… works differently than your mind. My mind understands pleasure and responds to it, but it also starts to panic when it can’t explain some things to itself.”

Adam takes a breath, fidgets with his shirt, can feel Nigel looming but no longer angry, just listening, now, while Adam needs it. He’s grateful enough that it draws a smile, before he sets his teeth to his bottom lip and continues.

“I am used to this apartment being a work apartment, where I come to help you dispatch or track or set a shipment, but where I don’t sleep. And if I wake up here, I will panic, even if you’re here, and even if you talk to me I won’t hear you, because my mind won’t be listening. And I will panic, and I will get angry, and it won’t be at you.”

He allows his eyes to meet Nigel’s, just once, looks away again. “I can’t sleep _here_ ," he insists softly, almost helpless now in being entirely unable to explain. “But it doesn’t mean I don’t want to sleep with you. Because I do, again, maybe even here, but not now. And if I don’t go now I will sleep and then -” Deep breath, slow release. He doesn’t start again, though the point at which he could loop the information is clear.

“If you ever have sex with me at my apartment, I can sleep there," Adam adds, almost as an afterthought that warms his cheeks.

“Together,” Nigel corrects him, and his tone is softer now, more a question than a brute insistence.

“Sleep together,” Adam amends, eyes wide and searching and Nigel presses a hand to his cheek, stepping close enough to close the distance between them. Their bodies press together again, Nigel bare, Adam half that way, and he presses his mouth against Adam’s brow, letting it linger.

“Have sex together,” murmurs Nigel. “Not fucking _with_ you, fucking _together_.”

His relief is tangible, shoulders unlocking from where they had gathered tense and furious, aching into ease now that he understands - now that Adam took the time to explain. Nigel still doesn’t entirely get it, it doesn’t particularly make any kind of sense in his own head, but in Adam’s own particular way there is a logic to it that he can follow.

A sigh, long, against Adam’s hair and Nigel pulls away enough to press their foreheads together instead, eyes closed as he brings up his other hand to the younger man’s cheek, and brushes their lips together. “I’m not letting you fucking walk home alone. Not from this shit neighborhood.”

“I don’t walk home, that would take hours. I take the subway - the downtown D from 167th -”

“Downtown to fucking where?”

“To my apartment,” Adam laughs, and Nigel catches it beneath his mouth, hard enough to force Adam to take a step to steady himself.

Nigel takes the words as he imagines they’re intended - that Adam is fine to do this alone, has before plenty of times - and resists the urge to stalk after him, follow him home and drag him into bed again. Another kiss, another, before Nigel finally relents, with a grudging mutter. “Take the computer with you - you still haven’t found my fucking container.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A nervous, twitchy glance over Adam’s shoulder and a crooked, shy smile draws Nigel nearer, tea left to rest on a bookshelf so that his hands are free to splay across Adam’s bare stomach. One arm snares him around the waist, his other hand presses up his chest, and Nigel tucks his nose into the curve of Adam’s neck to tease kisses beneath the collar of his shirt. His eyes raise, though, to take in the pristinely organized closet - big enough to fucking walk in, big enough for them both to walk in with room to spare - and he surveys the tidy clothes, the organizers, the -
> 
> “Fucking pornos, Adam?”

It can’t be later than two in the morning and Adam watches his reflection in the window as they take the train down from 167th. It’s strange having Nigel with him, for this, for no other reason than the fact that Adam usually always took the train by himself. The company is welcome, though, even if it sits hunched and intimidating at Adam’s side and swears about not being able to smoke in the car.

Adam doesn’t care. When he stops watching his reflection he rests his head back against the glass and lets his eyes close. Once in a while the train jostles him against Nigel’s warm shoulder and he allows his weight to stay there a bit.

The night isn’t cold when they have to walk, but Adam keeps his hands in his pockets anyway, a fresh laptop under one arm, balanced and held by the heel of his hand. He has lived in his apartment as long as he can remember. With his dad, when he was still alive. Alone, now. But it’s his, it’s always been his and he likes it. He likes the colors and the way everything is arranged. He likes the view.

They take the lift up and Adam sets his laptop against his chest with a shadow of a smile so Nigel won’t step close and kiss him. Not here, anyway, not yet. The man’s presence and closeness is comforting, though, and Adam allows the smile to grow a bit more for this. He leads them to the front door and when he unlocks the apartment and works the alarm system, he lets Nigel in first.

“Fucking hell,” Nigel breathes, eyes widening as he steps inside almost cautiously. It’s, for lack of another descriptor, fucking huge. Three of his shithole temporary spaces could fit inside of it, at least, and that’s just in the part that Nigel can see now. Ceilings high enough that Nigel couldn’t reach them if he jumped, intricate old crown-moulding around pressed tin and Nigel finally looks down from the ceiling and whistles.

Adam sets the computer on the coffee table and finds his way to the lights, and Nigel is torn between watching Adam in his space, and watching the space itself. He steps towards the window, peeling back the curtains - fucking _curtains_ \- and looks out onto the street. Nice neighborhood. Quiet. Trees, which is enough to make him laugh.

“You live here by yourself?” Nigel asks, and Adam nods.

“I do now.”

“How in the fuck do you afford it?” A stupid question, probably, as Nigel is entirely aware of how much money Adam’s made at least from their jobs in the last few months, but there’s multiple fucking bedrooms, a kitchen with room enough for a big table in it...

“I pay the mortgage,” Adam shrugs.

Nigel presses his fingers to his eyes, grimacing in dire amusement, and he drops his hand. “Adam.”

A pause, and Adam responds, “Nigel.”

An outright laugh at this, and Nigel hesitates for a moment before dropping into the plush couch, soft velveteen under his fingers as he spreads his arms across it, relishing that he can take up so much space and there’s still so much more to occupy. “No wonder you work for me.”

Adam blinks at him. “I don’t work for you,” he tells him matter of factly, moving further into the apartment to get to the kitchen, starting the jug to boil for coffee or tea or something that is certainly not beer from a warm refrigerator.

The place seems to almost echo with their presence, enormous and silent and almost ominous. Nigel wonders if it’s the walls that feel like they press in too much when Adam’s here alone, if that’s why he needs to get out, go somewhere, do something that doesn’t involve sitting at the large table in the dining room and tapping his fingers against the wood. He wonders if that’s how Adam’s mind works, if it’s this enormous space that, once in a while, fills with echoes that are too hard to make out.

He rubs his eyes. Far too fucking deep for so early in the morning. He’s still pleasantly warm from touching Adam earlier, wants to do more again, if the kid lets him. He sits forward to see into the kitchen, where Adam takes down two mugs and tosses a teabag into each before pouring the water. An actual kettle too, surprisingly, no glasses in the microwave at this place.

“I work with you,” Adam clarifies, walking out again and past Nigel to one of the closed doors behind which is his bedroom, still dark, though when Adam turns the light on to set his sweater away, he leaves it on. “Like sex.”

_Together._

Nigel knows an invitation when he sees one. Or wants to see one. And he’s already here, in this bullshit huge apartment, and Adam’s just _there_ , and though Nigel can’t help but spare a glance towards the unminded laptop, he doesn’t push his luck with that and stands to follow instead. Knowing Adam, the kid would - if asked - slip right back into working again, and Nigel would be bored out of his mind again and have to try keeping quiet and and probably have to go out to the corner store for fucking soda.

Not how he wants to spend the rest of his night, and - from what he can see of Adam working loose the buttons on his shirt - not what Adam wants, either.

Nigel sips his tea - fucking _tea_ \- and reaches for a cigarette but stops himself, swallowing back a grumble at the denial of it. It doesn’t feel right, though, stinking up such a nice place. Adam doesn’t live in a dump like Nigel has to while he’s here, and he’s been courteous enough to have Nigel over so the least he can do is not turn it _into_ a dump while he’s here.

A nervous, twitchy glance over Adam’s shoulder and a crooked, shy smile draws Nigel nearer, tea left to rest on a bookshelf so that his hands are free to splay across Adam’s bare stomach. One arm snares him around the waist, his other hand presses up his chest, and Nigel tucks his nose into the curve of Adam’s neck to tease kisses beneath the collar of his shirt. His eyes raise, though, to take in the pristinely organized closet - big enough to fucking walk in, big enough for them both to walk in with room to spare - and he surveys the tidy clothes, the organizers, the -

“Fucking pornos, Adam?”

Adam makes a considering sound, follows Nigel’s line of sight to the aforementioned videos and shrugs, tensing enough to suggest embarrassment but nothing to outright drive him to hide the things. He swallows, continues with his buttons.

“I find them interesting.”

“Porn’s not meant to be interesting.”

“Then why would you watch it?”

Nigel snorts, shakes his head, lets Adam go to have a look at the things properly, finding the younger man following out of habit, perhaps, or a need to finally hide them now that they are being genuinely scrutinized.

“You watch it to get fucking… aroused. To get off on. It’s not a fucking documentary film, Jesus.”

“Well, I -” Adam grabs for one, manages to snag it. “I enjoy them for -” Not so lucky with the second. “For those reasons. I find them pleasing. And since that is what they are for that is why I have them.”

“But these are just - fuck, Adam, they’re boring.”

“Porn isn’t meant to be interesting,” Adam counters, eyebrow arched, cheeks deeply pink now.

“But they should at least be engrossing. This is shit, Adam, it’s fucking awful.”

“But you’ve seen them.”

 

“What?”

“To say they are awful. You must have seen them.”

“I read the back. It’s enough.”

“I like the music,” Adam shrugs, reaching for his film again, pursing his lips in displeasure when it is held tight.

“You fucking what.”

“The music isn’t overbearing or silly, it’s comfortable in the background and makes the film easy to watch. Enjoyable. To get aroused to. Give it back, Nigel.”

“Fucking fake tits everywhere in these,” Nigel mutters. Though the temptation is strong, he doesn’t tease Adam more than he already has, the sharpened tone and narrow look enough already to know that he’s toeing a line. He lets him snatch the tape back, shaking his head as Adam files it back with the others and scoots the box further back into the closet, out of view.

“What kind of movies do you watch?” asks Adam, a bit of a challenge in his voice, enough to make Nigel grin as he leaves him to his undressing and takes in the room. Simple. Tidy. Books neatly arranged on the shelves - stuff about space, mostly, and electronics. Perfectly made bed.

Of _course_ he makes his bed.

Fucking Adam.

“I don’t,” Nigel answers. “Not often enough to _buy_ them. You bought those?”

“How else would I watch them again?”

“The entire fucking internet.”

“But I like _these_ ones,” Adam reiterates, and Nigel seats himself carefully on the side of the bed. “You don’t watch them at all? I find that - that’s hard to believe. Sixty-six percent of all men -”

“I said not often,” snorts Nigel, bouncing a little on the bed - much more posh than his own crap thin mattress - before taking up Adam’s book from the nightstand and thumbing through it. “If I want to get laid, I find someone and I get laid. If I want to jerk off, I fucking jerk off. If I just want to see tits then there’s fucking bars for that,” he shrugs, but glances upward at this. “The music there is definitely shit, though.”

“This is why I have my movies. At home. Bars have too many people,” Adam replies, chin up, almost haughty if he wasn’t half-dressed and in his socks in a bedroom the size of Nigel’s entire shithole apartment. Adam returns to the closet to pull a hanger from it, setting his shirt on it, hanging it up. It’s meticulous and it’s practiced and it’s a routine, Nigel has grown used to watching Adam develop them, stick to them, even when the entire situation was going to hell.

The kid held up better than some men on his team.

He snares Adam as he walks past, pulling a surprised sound from him before catching him comfortably against the bed. Adam’s eyes narrow but it’s far from anger, his cheeks still warm, lips still pursed under pretence of displeasure.

“I’m tired,” Adam ventures, feels the warm air from the snort Nigel breathes against him.

“You fucking liar.”

“You can’t know if I’m lying or not, regarding that, it’s early in the morning and we’ve been awake for almost two days working on this shipment, since we found the loophole. Since I found the loophole. I am tired. Aren’t you tired?”

“Not even a little bit,” Nigel murmurs, but catches himself and corrects. He doesn’t like to lie to Adam, much as he doesn’t give a shit about doing it to anyone else. Even joking, it feels wrong, one of the only times in which Nigel bothers recognizing the idea of wrongness at all. “Maybe a little bit.”

“See?”

“I see you trying to play fucking coy with me,” answers Nigel, an arm around Adam’s middle as he lays them both back and himself half atop the younger man to kiss the quick smile that appears. “Is that why you had me over, to fucking sleep?”

“I didn’t have you over,” Adam reminds him. “You came over on your own.”

“And not to fucking go to sleep,” Nigel agrees, shoving his arm beneath Adam where he lays, to roll him on top instead, heavy and warm as a blanket, if blankets could somehow be tense at the same time.

“You swear too much,” Adam tells him, almost exasperated, but it earns him little more than another kiss. He has found that Nigel is always near when they’re working, preferring closeness to distance, pacing behind him like a guard dog would behind their master to keep between them and the door.

Adam doesn’t need protecting.

But he likes it.

“No I fucking don’t.”

“And you will not goad me into swearing at you in turn. I’m not angry. I only swear when I’m angry.”

“I’ve been a good influence.”

“You are, in fact, a terrible influence in everything but your skills in running a successful heist,” Adam tells him, amused when Nigel snorts again. “You swear and smoke too much. You drink. You take the product you’re trying to sell -”

“I sell it.”

“ _I_ sell it,” Adam corrects him, setting fingers against Nigel’s lips to keep him quiet. “And you’re very loud, very rude. I shouldn’t like you at all.”

“But you do fucking like me.” Nigel’s grin is warm and Adam smiles back, kissing him in answer. He likes him. He wouldn’t have him so close if he didn’t. He would not have come back and kissed him again if he didn’t like Nigel. It was never hard for Adam. If he liked something he held onto it. If he didn’t, he made sure it got out of his life before it grew to be a bad habit or irritation.

This man - for all his flaws, and few good qualities - Adam likes a lot.

Nigel doesn’t imagine he could get much fucking luckier than this.

He runs his hands up Adam’s bare back, fingernails curling down either side of his spine to relish the shiver that brings him nearer. Chasing with kisses the fingers that press to his cheeks, Nigel snares one between his lips and sucks it deep against his tongue, humming, eyes heavy-lidded as he watches Adam’s cheeks bloom brightly dark.

It’s all fallen into place as readily as all - well, most - of their heists have. Though it’s only been a short time since this thing started, Nigel already finds himself rearranging his plans, his schedule to accommodate Adam, much to the dismay of several other collaborators who can’t seem to fucking grasp that if Adam needs quiet, everyone needs to shut their fucking mouths. That if Adam’s soda is running low, someone had better have another one fucking ready, if not Nigel himself. That if Adam is tired, or hungry, or anything fucking at all, Nigel has to square him up before anything else happens.

Twice now it’s come nearly to blows, rough shoves until Nigel reminded the men who fucking butters their bread, and though their confusion about what’s come over Nigel was tangible, they tucked their tails between their legs like the slavering dogs they are.

How could he possibly explain that what’s come over him is Adam fucking Raki? He hardly understands it himself, other than in simple terms.

“What do you want to do?” Nigel asks him, settling back even as his hands work over warm, blushing skin, back to shoulders, chest to stomach and around again. “Don’t fucking say sleep.”

Adam bends into the touches, adjusts his position above Nigel so his knees rest on the bed as he straddles him, and hums. He does want to sleep, his mind working much, much slower, now, than it usually does, merely because of the exhaustion creeping through him. But he wants more than that, too. The first time Nigel is in his apartment, the first time they are here together...

"I want your mouth over my skin," Adam tells him. "You lick and kiss and it feels so good. Just that."

"Just that?"

"I could be selfish and say just that."

Nigel grins. "What the fuck else, then?"

Adam bites his lip as scar-thick knuckles graze up his sides, down them again, tickling and pleasing and perfect. Beneath him, Nigel is growing harder, and it astounds Adam that he does that to him. Two men, neither of whom are gay, being so aroused around each other, because of each other, and it feels so wonderfully, deeply good.

So Adam just slips his hand between them to wrap around Nigel and stroke.

Sometimes words stumble, but his fingers have yet to.

Nigel sighs rumbling and arches, enough to rock Adam forward and free himself from his jeans. They're shoved and kicked to the floor, Adam rocked to and fro as Nigel squirms and settles again. Clever fingers fan across the glistening tip of his cock, thickening beneath every stroke, and when Adam rolls back the thin, tender skin with his fingertips to bare his swelling head, Nigel swears beneath his breath, teeth bared in a grin.

Nigel is not forceful, not with Adam and not like this, but he is impatient. Cock protruding from his boxers, trapped between the waistband and his belly, Nigel tugs Adam's hand free and holding his wrist turns to pin him beneath. Rubbing once, his cock leaving a slick trail along Adam's belly, Nigel moves lower, to draw skin between his lips, to follow the ridges of bone, licking and sucking at neck and collarbone and nipples alike.

Because Adam asked for it.

And Nigel makes fucking sure that Adam gets what he wants.

It matters more than the fact Nigel's never sucked cock before. Matters more than the fact he's never wanted to suck cock before or even really thought about it beyond having it done to his own. It matters more than any stupid bullshit his men might snort and laugh about if they knew.

He would just make sure they can't make stupid bullshit jokes again for a long while.

But that's not what he wants to think about and so he resumes where his lips had stilled in thought, wrapped around one rosy-dark little nipple that hardens between his teeth, beneath his tongue. Adam presses his tongue between his lips and when Nigel sucks the younger man's mouth falls slack with a helpless, sweet sound. He rids Adam of his slacks, taking a moment to lay them aside rather than pitch them to the floor, before pressing calloused hands to Adam's shuddering sides and dragging a sucking kiss against Adam's soft belly.

Sensation Adam has always enjoyed, always felt more keenly than others, on every level, and here he just allows his arms to splay at his sides and experience the sucking lips and rough stubble and hot tongue. He sees colors behind his eyes when he closes them, softly growing galaxies of his own making, and grins as Nigel kisses lower.

He squirms a little, just enough to feel Nigel hold him tighter before he kisses across his hips, over the curve of bone, the pale skin, the warm hair there...

Adam wonders if this is a relationship, or if they are just - to borrow Nigel’s favorite word - fucking. Either way, he doesn't think it matters as long as they keep doing it. He wants to keep doing it.

He drops his hand to stroke over Nigel’s hair, breathes out heavily when Nigel’s cheek grazes his cock as he continues his deliberate exploration of Adam.

A warm sigh against sensitive skin pulls a shiver from the younger man that makes Nigel grin. The kid’s said he’s had sex before, and Nigel doesn’t doubt it. Adam, from everything Nigel can tell and his acute skill for detecting bullshit, doesn’t lie, at least not to him, maybe not at all. But it’s exciting to imagine that maybe he hasn’t done this before, that when Nigel spreads his tongue wide along the length of Adam’s cock and Adam whimpers, he’s feeling it for the first time.

It’s the first time Nigel’s done it, and when he licks again he considers what a very different thing it is to suck cock rather than have it sucked. It’s a heady taste, sweat and salt and musk, not entirely unpleasant and made even less so by the way Adam presses a hand against his eye and whimpers another sweet little noise. Nigel assures himself that for as much as he’s had this done to him, he can sure as shit figure out how to do it himself.

He parts his lips, holding Adam tightly in hand, and taking him deep over his tongue.

And promptly chokes, sputtering a little, cursing in a harsh whisper before trying it again, a little less deep this time. Just enough to feel the ridge of Adam’s cockhead skim along his tongue, back and forth, just enough that Nigel reminds himself to watch his fucking teeth and curls his lips over them to pull a steady sucking rhythm against him.

Adam lets his voice free, when his voice even makes it past his throat. Most is breaths. Soft, warm, aching little breaths that come quick and pull at Adam’s skin in the most pleasing way.

Nigel has definitely not done this to him with his mouth before.

Adam tries to draw his knees up but finds himself unable, feet slipping from bed over and over, to Nigel’s apparent amusement and delight, before he catches Adam’s ankle and holds it, keeps that knee bent, feels as Adam curls his toes and splays them in pleasure. The hand in Nigel’s hair tightens, releases, Adam says something that is too breathy to make out and Nigel feels entirely too pleased at having managed to drive the kid voiceless.

Maybe he's not that bad at it, after all.

And it shouldn't fucking matter if he is to anyone else anyway, because they're not Adam.

Adam tugs his hair again and bucks his hips, hard and close and needy, greedy in his demanding. The galaxies behind his eyes begin to explode, bright pinks and yellows and whites, like fireworks more than silent stars, and Adam makes a very pleased sound before biting his lip.

Nigel resists the impulse to stop, to pull his mouth free and just jerk Adam off again instead. He fucking hates when that happens to him, though, so he’s not going to do it to Adam, especially when Adam is trembling like he is, fingers and toes curled tight, breath coming in panting gasps, a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. He’s beautiful, the way he gives himself over to this - to Nigel - so entirely, no guilt or conflict or doubt that what they’re doing is a good thing simply because it feels good.

And making Adam feel good has, unexpectedly, become Nigel’s foremost priority.

So he sucks harder, cheeks hollowing, lips slick with spit as they slide back and forth around the stiff cock in his mouth. Rough fingers tighten around the base of it, a firm tug, and he feels Adam go suddenly still, gasping, as his cock swells and pulses, twitching release into Nigel’s mouth. It spreads hot and thick across his tongue, a bitter taste and a volume that makes Nigel gag again but he’s got this now, and rather than let the moment of discomfort show he just swallows instead. Throat working, a growl caught on his breath as he does, he sucks and takes it slippery and hot until Adam’s hips ease back onto the bed and his fingers loosen shaking in Nigel’s hair.

Adam groans, throat clicking on a swallow as he tries to catch his breath, eyes blue, wide, up towards the wall behind him as he arches his neck to see. He has never had that done to him before, not like that. He sees stars in his vision, now, still, even when it’s over, and he grins, brings a hand to his face to press against his lips before sighing, ducking his head to Nigel.

“You didn’t have to swallow like that,” he murmurs, though he’s flushed, pleased, entirely warmed by the fact that he had. Nigel gives him a look, one Adam has learned to associate with the term ‘sit the fuck down and shut the fuck up’, and instead sits up and leans down to kiss the man, legs curling over the edge of the bed to keep himself balanced as he does, tasting himself on Nigel’s lips.

He’s tasted himself before. He supposes everyone has tasted themselves before.

“You’re still really hard,” Adam points out, pressing his face close against Nigel’s, nuzzling him as the man breathes against him, growls catching on the ends of sighs and quick pants when Adam reaches to stroke him again. “And on your knees, that’s not fair.”

The last is said almost in awe, or something close to it, and Adam bites his lip when Nigel says something entirely unsavory and, for a change, it runs warm like honey over Adam’s bones.

Nigel sets his hands against the edge of the bed and stands, their mouths still joined until he uncurls his spine with a stretch and a grunt. It wasn’t terrible. Not something he would have done on his own, not something he would repeat - not for anyone but Adam, anyway, because Nigel’s fairly fucking certain he’s never been so hard as those breathless little sounds made him.

Nigel lets his shirt drop to the floor, head lolling to his shoulder as he turns a smile down at Adam. A slight thing, more in the narrowing of his eyes than on his lips, but his look of pleasure grows as Adam sits forward and skims his palms up Nigel’s stomach, following the swath of hair upward to his chest.

“What are you doing?” Nigel mutters fondly, his voice warm, throat rough from taking Adam against it. “Look at you.”

He does just that, taking in the lean body and pale skin and bright eyes that turn upward towards him - focused always just past or just below his face - through tousled curls of hair. Nigel strokes over the cock tenting his boxers, and without reservation or shame - why should he be fucking ashamed? - he reaches beneath the threadbare cotton. The fabric moves with the slow jerking motion, a rumble in his long sigh. “You’re fucking beautiful, Adam.”

Adam shifts back, pulling Nigel with him by sheer proximity and the want to be closer still. Adam kisses him first, this time, allows his back to meet the bed so Nigel can press against him again and slips his hands beneath the waistband of Nigel’s boxers to slide them down.

Nigel is muscle and scars, cigarettes and the taste of sweet whiskey and Adam loves it. Loves seeing what his hands do to him, what his mouth does, what the little sounds he makes when Nigel touches him do. So he makes them again, little gasps when Nigel shifts enough to kick the fabric from his legs, rubs up against Adam’s thigh with a groan.

“Do you want me to use my mouth too?” Adam asks.

 _Yes_ is the immediate answer that comes to mind. _Fuck yes_ is the second, and every iterations after all along the same line. Nigel tastes Adam’s mouth again, tongues sweeping together, a rough kiss but Adam’s lips are wonderfully soft and despite Nigel’s reflexive answer, it’s honestly enough to just to feel Adam squirming lithe and slender beneath him. It’s enough to kiss him, enough to feel Adam’s fingers press against his face and feel his softened cock shift where Nigel rubs his, throbbing hard.

“Don’t worry about it,” Nigel manages instead. He doesn’t want to ask, doesn’t want to make him do something just because he did it. That’s not the fucking point. Nigel didn’t do it to him to get it in return, he did it because he fucking wanted to, because _Adam_ wanted him to.

Adam tilts his head a little, nose wrinkling as he reassures him, “I’m not worried.”

“You don’t have to.”

“I know. But that’s not what I asked.”

“Goddammit, Adam,” Nigel snarls softly, catching Adam in another smothering kiss as he rubs harder against him. “Stop making this fucking hard. You don’t have to.”

Adam makes a sound, a soft whining thing like a displeased animal might make, and presses up against Nigel’s chest to move him, with another curse, to his back. Adam straddles him, takes his hands away so he can’t touch himself anymore and kisses him once, briefly, on the lips before sliding further down his body to nose against the warm hair on his chest, his stomach, lower still.

He ignores the protests, and mirrors what Nigel did to him before, a long lick before taking him into his mouth. The taste is musky, heady, warm and entirely masculine, and Adam takes a moment to understand how much he can take before it grows uncomfortable or impossible for him. Then he hums, pulls back, and wraps his hand around the length of Nigel he can’t swallow.

It’s unpracticed, inexperienced, and utterly fucking perfect. Nigel curses, predictably, but remains almost entirely still, which is unusual. Adam pulls back, sucking his bottom lip into his mouth to catch the spit against it and tells him, quietly, that he can move if he wants to.

And Nigel wants to, badly, he wants to do so many things to the younger man watching him with such willingness, offering with earnest curiosity so much more than Nigel would demand or even ask from him. Nigel lowers a hand from where Adam set them, the other still above his head, and he twines his fingers through Adam’s hair, unleashing a groan when Adam’s mouth surrounds him again.

A lazy undulation rocks his hips upward, and Nigel is careful - always fucking careful with Adam - not to hold him in place when he does. It’s a slow thing, languid movements and steady pressure sucking in Adam’s cheeks, and Nigel forces his eyes to remain open just enough that he can watch the way Adam’s lips redden, curved around his cock. An exploration for both of them, really, but even in Adam’s unfamiliarity with doing this, Nigel is sure that out of all the blowjobs he’s enjoyed - and there have been many - this one is by fucking far the best.

“Fucking hell, Adam.”

Adam hums again, curious, and glances up to see Nigel shuddering in pleasure from that one tiny thing alone. So he does it again. Quick to learn, quick to pick up and remember and adjust to properly work, whether it be a computer or the man beneath him, now pressing both his hands against his eyes with a weak sound of his own before he drops them, one back in Adam’s hair, the other against his own chest, curling inwards against the hair there.

Adam draws his teeth over him, just once, before remembering to curl his lips over them but finds - for later use, perhaps - that the accidental slip is far from unwelcome. He works his mouth until Nigel is speechless, entirely unusual in itself, then he tries to take him deeper in. His jaw hurts, unused to this, but it’s not painful, it’s not unpleasant.

Adam spreads his tongue against the vein that runs the length of Nigel’s cock and sucks to pull off of him before sighing against the wet skin and taking him in again. The more he does it, the harder Nigel shivers, the closer his cursing comes to pleading, to just breathy sounds in general, until Adam moans softly against him and that’s it, and whatever floodgate of will power Nigel had holding him back snaps.

Adam chokes quietly, as Nigel had, unused to this but trying, and sits up when Nigel gently tugs him away, pressing his fingers to his lips until he can lick them clean.

“I’ve never heard you make that sound before,” Adam tells him, and he’s smiling, warm, sleepy, contented because Nigel is contented, melting himself into the mattress in pleasure.

Nigel manages another shaky breath to try and steady himself, and it huffs out in a laugh. “I’ve never had anyone suck my d- do what you did, like that,” he corrects, swallowing hard. He sits up enough to curl a hand around the back of Adam’s neck, not a sudden move, not a sharp pull, but he brings the younger man over him and tangles their mouths together until he has to breathe again.

He’ll still beat the life out of anyone who calls either of them a cocksucker, but it doesn’t mean he wouldn’t do it - either part of it - again in an instant. Nigel draws Adam down alongside him and curls around the smaller man, legs twined together, forehead pressed to Adam’s temple, fingers spreading and clasping in an almost feline gesture of relaxation. If he were the panther, vicious and cruel, that Nigel sometimes seems to be, he would be purring right now.

“Can you sleep like this?” he asks, a challenge in the question and a preemptive unhappiness in expectation of the answer. Some long-winded explanation as to why Nigel will have to leave, or sleep on the couch, that Nigel will have to believe is true despite his misgivings that maybe Adam is the one who’s in this only for the sex.

Doubts that Adam doesn’t feel whatever the fuck has consumed Nigel in such a startlingly short time.

Paranoia, tense and sudden, over everything and nothing all at once, enough that it drives Nigel out of bed to seek a cigarette.

Adam starts to answer and finds the man gone, quick steps to find the balcony to lean out of and smoke through. Adam wonders if that’s a habit or if it actually helps. Habit, perhaps, or to calm the adrenaline and raging pleasure hormones within him. Adam wonders if he should try, but wrinkles his nose at the thought. Instead he climbs off the bed, goes to the bathroom to brush his teeth and wash his face before walking out into the main room again. It’s cooler, with the windows thrown open, and Adam curls his arms around himself as he watches Nigel smoke something that cannot be his first, and might not even be tobacco.

“I can sleep here,” Adam finally answers him, tilting his head. “You can sleep here. With me, on the bed, if you want to. But if you’re uncomfortable you can leave, I won’t keep you here.”

“If I fucking want to?” echoes Nigel, watching from his peripheral as Adam shrugs again, a little more uncomfortable this time, and as much as it drives Nigel fucking mad to see it, there’s a beauty in his uncertainty - in seeing that Adam doesn’t know what the fuck this is any more than Nigel does.

He flicks the remainder of his cigarette to the street below and pulls the glass doors shut behind him, scratching beneath the waistband of the boxers he managed to tug back on before baring himself in front of the entire West Village. A hesitation, deliberate this time, as he steps nearer Adam until there are only inches between them. A breath, equally intentional, and his willpower wanes, weakened when Adam settles his eyes on Nigel’s shoulder.

Strong arms snare Adam around his waist and Nigel half-drags, half-carries him back to the bed, sliding down beside him when Adam lays back. The kiss that joins them again is strong with smoke, stronger still in relief, and Nigel curls around Adam again to feel their bodies pressed close and to ease the hammering of both their hearts into sleep with long kisses, and gentle touch.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He rocks the length of his body down against the younger man, grinning as skinny limbs snare around his hips, his shoulders, and Adam shivers, tickled by Nigel’s unshaven cheek against his throat. It’s as though he can hear Adam’s thoughts at work, like the hum of one of his computers when he’s deep in the weeds, marked by the clockwork steadiness of his heart against Nigel’s broad chest. It wouldn’t be any fun to just let him up, not until he figures it out like one of his puzzles.
> 
> “Don’t you need a cigarette?”
> 
> Nigel is a very simple puzzle.

Adam’s alarm goes off at seven, because it always does, because he has always set it to. But unlike every morning when he reaches to turn it gently to quiet, another hand beats him to it, and is much more vicious in his need to shut it up.

"So fucking early, Adam, fuck."

It takes a moment for Adam to register this information, to not tense up in panic when heavy arms snare him and pull him closer against a hairy chest and warm skin. He remembers Nigel had come home with him. He remembers making tea he didn't drink, he remembers fighting him for his porno tapes, he remembers unbelievable heat around his cock, the sharp taste of Nigel’s release against his tongue.

These are good memories.

He sighs and ducks his head against Nigel’s chest, to press closer, finding a quiet snore his only answer to the motion. Adam wonders how Nigel can be like this, this terrifying whirlwind of curses and yelling, and yet entirely gentled, like a cat, against him now. The juxtaposition is beautifully confusing, and Adam allows himself to linger on it, eyes glazed though barely open, as he matches Nigel’s steady, even breathing.

The older man snorts, gruff, and digs his face against the pillow as Adam’s fingers come to rest against his throat. He marks the pathway of his pulse with his fingertips, surprised that when his tattoo comes beneath them, it only feels like more soft skin. The woman stands beckoning, clad in black lingerie, a tacky image from another time and emblazoned prominently on the man’s throat. He wonders if he would ever like anything enough to put it into his skin, permanent and unerasable, and wrinkles his nose in distaste at the thought.

“Did it hurt?”

Nigel’s snore is the only response to Adam’s whispered question, so he keeps it for later. Higher, his fingers travel against the rough scruff on Nigel’s jaw, over cheeks that would be soft were they shaven, down the bridge of his nose and the scar that cuts across it.

“Did that one hurt?”

Nigel makes a grumbling sound, jerking his head aside to rid the tickling touch. Adam lowers his hand to curl it instead against the thick snarl of hair on his chest, and tucks his head beneath Nigel’s jaw.

“Did what hurt?”

The rumble startles him as much as Nigel’s smoke-roughened voice, but he stays where he is, and Nigel’s arm pulls him closer still, almost too tight.

“The scar on your nose. The tattoo on your neck.”

“Of course they fucking hurt.”

“Why?”

Nigel lifts a hand to grind thick knuckles against his eyes, and tilts his head enough to regard Adam blearily, pressed against him. “You talk too much,” he mutters fondly, and Adam frowns.

“Sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry.”

The arm tucked beneath Adam shifts, and Nigel pushes his hand through Adam’s hair. He’s thought about it at length, even when they were working, Adam with his hand around a bottle of soda, the other against the keys of a computer. Imagined stroking it back from the younger man’s face, pulling his curls slowly straight to hear him gasp, burying his face in it to feel its silken softness against his cheeks.

“Yes,” Nigel answers, strangely patient in the warmth and closeness, in the sleepiness that makes him heavy so miserably fucking early in the morning. “They hurt. Why,” he trails off. “Fucker broke my nose. Drove his thick head right into it.” He decides, in a rare moment of tact, to not tell Adam how he drove that thick fucking head right into a wall immediately after, again and again and again. “The tattoo - shit if I know, darling. It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

"How old were you?"

"Not-old."

"Nigel, that's not -"

"Sixteen," Nigel mumbles, sighing resignation at a morning he could have spent sleeping in. "All my friends were getting shit done, told me to choose something so I picked up the closest magazine."

"Oh.” The tone is soft, an expression of acceptance of a fact. Nonjudgmental, interested, perhaps, but not enough to push for another answer. It is curious, with Adam, how he tends to jump to extremes in mood, rarely linger in the middle ground where it’s safe and predictable. Either his curiosity is staved off by a word, or it is insatiable despite sentences fed him.

It has only been a few hours since they collapsed into bed, and already Adam is squirming to start the day while Nigel could sleep a decade and find rest only then. Maybe. He turns onto his back and pulls Adam atop, hands seeking for the blankets to yank those up too, over them both, block out the light to blissful blackness again, and Nigel groans.

"This is good."

"I used to build blanket forts when I was a child," Adam says, still entirely too much movement, too much coherence for the morning, and no signs that he will slow. "Some worked out exceptionally well, constructing a structure from soft materials is not advisable on a scale larger than the dining room table, and not with weighted blankets but -"

Nigel lets him talk, no particular interest in what blankets work best or the added complexity of building with couch cushions instead of chairs, but his voice is like rain. Constant. Soft. Strangely soothing. And Adam likes to talk when he’s interested in something - he would continue forever, Nigel imagines, if nothing stopped him. Like needing to sleep. Or breathe.

He closes his eyes and rubs his hands along the length of Adam’s back, calloused and harsh-skinned but gentle in their touch. He presses a little to still Adam’s squirming when he moves as though to show Nigel how the sheet drapes over them, keeping him close, pressed chest to chest.

“Now this part’s important -”

Nigel cracks one eye open to regard him.

“Are you listening?” It’s a genuine question, the same tone as if he were asking where Nigel buys his shirts, utterly lacking any accusation or suspicion. Nigel hasn’t been listening, of course, not closely, but he shifts agreeably just to feel Adam’s lean body settle heavy against his own again.

“Of course I am, darling.”

Adam settles, chin against Nigel’s chest and watches him, doesn’t say anything for a moment. It's almost unnerving if this wasn't what he was like, always - unashamed to look, even when most of the time his eyes were strategically shifted to not meet others, aware, always aware.

Nigel blinks at him and watches Adam settle more comfortably on him, turning his face so his chin isn't digging into Nigel’s bones. He is, perhaps surprisingly, entirely relaxed. Pliant as he had been in sleep, trusting, and that wakes Nigel up a bit more. He wonders if Adam is counting minutes down in his mind, his routine displaced by however long, because they are both still in bed together.

"What is it?" He asks, and lifts the blanket a little to watch Adam turn to him again. Sleep-bent curls fall into his eyes before a hand comes up to hold them away, like a canopy. "The important thing?"

Adam blinks, smiles, and wriggles closer. "It needs good foundations." He taps fingers lightly over Nigel’s collarbones before pushing himself to sit up, making a surprised little noise when he’s snared back down. "I need to go make breakfast."

"Need?"

"Yes."

"Are you hungry?"

Adam considers this, and frowns. "No."

"Then stay in bed."

"But I always make it."

Nigel laughs, just a soft huff of air, and strokes Adam’s back before letting his arms drop to his sides, seeing if Adam will move. He does, and inevitably, Nigel catches him again. It becomes a playful thing, Adam moving in ways he thinks Nigel will not see as escaping, only to find his plans foiled every time until he is pinned warmly to the mattress and Nigel drapes himself over him with a contented sigh.

"I thought you were tired?"

"Fucking am."

"You caught me every time."

"Reflexes like a cat, darling."

Adam smiles, finds he cannot move the mass of man atop him and resigns himself to resting where he is. In truth, not uncomfortable, just unused to morning company. His eyes flicker, narrowing just a little, and before he can even make a move, Nigel has his slender wrist in hand, holding it pinned gently above his head.

“I can make tea,” Adam offers, instead, his rapidfire mind taking over what his body cannot.

A low rumble is pressed against his throat - sloppy, languid kisses all along his pale neck. “Coffee?”

“I can make that, too.”

“Will you for me?”

“I don’t have any.”

Nigel’s eyes lift, and anyone else would find themselves at the mercy of his grumbling morning wrath for such a tease. But there isn’t a tease here, no taunting at all, and he’s only a little coy. Just enough that it sooths the older man to lay heavy once more, a kiss tucked beneath Adam’s gorgeous jawline.

“Then you can’t get up.”

“Nigel -”

“Fucking no, Adam.”

He rocks the length of his body down against the younger man, grinning as skinny limbs snare around his hips, his shoulders, and Adam shivers, tickled by Nigel’s unshaven cheek against his throat. It’s as though he can hear Adam’s thoughts at work, like the hum of one of his computers when he’s deep in the weeds, marked by the clockwork steadiness of his heart against Nigel’s broad chest. It wouldn’t be any fun to just let him up, not until he figures it out like one of his puzzles.

“Don’t you need a cigarette?”

Nigel is a very simple puzzle.

Rolling off of Adam with a groan, he turns to his back and then his other side, sheets wrapping around him as he digs in his pants, discarded to the floor. Dark eyes dart to watch the flash of pale skin as Adam emerges from the bed victorious.

“Thirty-two percent of smokers have their first within five minutes of waking.”

“So?”

“So you’re late,” Adam points out. “We’ve been awake for almost ten. It’ll be eleven minutes by the time you start.”

“Will it.”

“Outside.”

Fucking Adam.

By the time he gets back - after two, to make up Adam’s stupid statistics - the bed is made and all hope for more rest in it is gone. He will not mess up the beautifully folded corners or carefully placed blankets. So instead he just goes to the kitchen, following the sound of Adam moving around there.

He takes the fucking tea.

Whatever Adam is making, it smells good. Eggs, probably, but more than that. Substantial and filling and healthy as Nigel’s breakfasts never are. He moves through the kitchen, letting his hands run over the pristine cupboard doors, over their cool handles, goes to stand by the window and see the city, actually see it, not the dirt-covered mess that his windows are.

"Why are you pacing?" Adam asks him, working a spatula through the eggs, reaching up for something on a higher shelf to season with. "If you don’t like eggs I have wholemeal toast and jam, butter, peanut butter, honey," he rattles off. "Cereal and fruit to go on it. Milk in the fridge -"

“I’m not pacing.”

It’s a weak argument - no argument at all, really, because it’s too fucking early to get into it with Adam. But he has, and he knows it, and he presses his fingers to his eyes and holds his breath in wait for it.

“You’re right.”

Nigel drops his hand and turns to the younger man, eyes wide. “I’m what?”

“You’re right,” Adam agrees.

“I’m -”

“You’re not pacing,” continues Adam. “Pacing is a back and forth movement, along the same horizontal plane. What you’re doing is circling.”

“I’ve not completed a fucking circle until I get back to you.”

A flicker of a smile tugs at the corners of Adam’s mouth as he turns the eggs onto the plate, setting it to the table. Nigel watches him return the pan to the sink to wash it, and continues his prowl through the apartment’s expansive perimeter.

 _Prowling_ is a much better word than _pacing_ anyway.

He follows the window frame across bare wall, until his fingers find the first of numerous bookshelves. The spines are flush, paperbacks paired with paperbacks, hardcovers with hardcovers, and Nigel’s nearly given them all a pass before he stops, suddenly, lips forming names as his eyes travel the length of a shelf.

“They’re fucking alphabetized.”

“Yes. Author last name, and the title for groups of the same author.”

“And they’re all about space.”

“That shelf is.”

Nigel, in truth, hasn’t wondered overmuch about what makes Adam tick outside of their work. It makes sense that he would have other interests, surely he doesn’t spend all of his time waiting for Nigel to call him for a job, and Nigel supposes he shouldn’t be surprised that the kid would have a knack for shit like this.

He’s not exactly the type to spend his free time enjoying bottle service and a shapely body in his lap.

The sound of cereal being poured into a bowl pulls his attention back, the eggs clearly intended for Nigel, though he looks at the box with disapproval before turning to the books and plucking down one at random.

“Are you a scientist?” He sets his tea on the shelf and flips through the pages, drawing a breath as his ribs feel close to cracking at the sight of Adam’s name scrawled on the inside cover. He sweeps his thumb across it.

This isn't the neat precise hand with which Adam writes instructions, this is younger, unpracticed. Little. He turns to the cover again, frowns, continues to flip through the pages and finds no pictures, just terrifyingly complex diagrams.

"I'm not qualified to be, on paper," Adam answers, rummaging through his kitchen still, "but I have studied biology and chemistry for many years with my dad. Physics was my favourite, it led to astronomy -"

"How do you understand this?"

Adam leans out to see what book he's holding, and opens his mouth to explain just how logical the entire theorem is when Nigel lifts a hand to stop him, sets the book away and takes up his tea again. Adam sighs, watches him, before pushing himself to return to the kitchen and settle at the table, fidgeting with his spoon as he waits.

"What kind of books do you read?" He calls.

“I don’t.”

Fuck.

It’s the wrong answer.

It is completely the wrong fucking answer and Nigel remains entirely still for far too long, lingering in the doorway to the kitchen. Adam regards him at length, but not with distance, merely a filing away of another fact about Nigel, even if confusion twitches his brows inward. Adam thinks he’s stupid. He’s sure of it, even if it’s too fucking polite to say it. It’s why Nigel’s shit with computers, why he’s got so many _bad habits_ that Adam insists on going on and fucking on about.

Nigel’s eyes narrow, and he watches Adam press his cereal down into the milk in steady circles.

“I read in school. When I was in it.”

Not better.

Worse.

Adam pushes his spoon down again.

“Your eggs are going to get cold.”

“I fucking know that,” Nigel rumbles, forcing himself closer, drawing his spine straight and widening his shoulders, and still entirely too goddamn aware of how hard it is to seem imposing when you’re only wearing a pair of ratty underwear.

He drops heavily into the chair beside Adam and runs his fingers against the side of the mug he was offered, in lieu of the cigarette he desperately needs right fucking now to ease the sinuous swells of displeasure coiling in tendrils through his chest. Better to get it out and just say it, clear the air that’s thickening in Nigel’s throat.

“You think I’m stupid.”

"I don’t think you're stupid."

"You fucking do -"

"You always assume and tell me." Adam lifts his eyes, still calm, still comfortable, too early in the morning for arguments or anger. "You tell me what I think and what I'll do and you're wrong, when you do, but you can't read minds. No one can read minds, it's a fallacy people latch onto when they need to hear what they want to hear from someone who has authority."

Adam swallows, slows the torrent, continues.

"You aren’t book smart but you are not stupid. Stupid implies you have no knowledge of anything at all, and you do."

"Like fucking what?" Nigel stabs a fork into his eggs, takes a mouthful and grudgingly admits, with a hum, that they taste really, really good.

"Like running a heist. Planning one. Coordinating people to do work that you do not have the power to, on your own. You know how to talk to people. I don't know how to talk to people. I don't understand how they can say one thing and mean another, but you do. You know when to laugh when people say something even if it isn't funny. I can't do that."

Nigel watches Adam as he speaks. Watches him after he’s done speaking. Watches him as he spoons cereal to his mouth and presses his napkin to his lips after. It’s a fresh pain, this time, not the rising tide of anger that rarely abates without the waves crashing out of Nigel’s mouth or into someone else’s face.

Something else entirely.

It feels warm, almost uncomfortably warm, and Nigel shifts in his seat to try and alleviate it, but another glance at Adam makes that heat rush right back in again.

“Thank you,” he manages, the words awkward from a mouth shaped for cruelty more than any kindness, but it’s the best he can do. Nigel tries to remember the last time anyone said anything like that to him, without wanting something in return - money or drugs or favors - and can’t. Maybe it’s never happened at all.

He reaches out and runs a hand over Adam’s freshly combed hair, and before he can catch another spot of milk with his napkin, Nigel presses his thumb against it to wipe it away instead.

“Why aren’t you eating eggs?”

“I like cereal.”

Nigel doesn’t argue the logic of that, but instead throws a glance towards the bookshelves again, silently faulting them for the ill mood that rose choking in him. They eat in silence for a time, utensils clicking softly, and it’s extraordinary in its ordinariness. Sleeping together. Eating breakfast together. Nigel thinks, distantly, of the missing container and the laptop still closed on the coffee table, but pushes it aside for now.

“What kind of book should I read? None of that bullshit with the charts in it.”

"It's not -" Adam’s smile is little, almost smug, but he resists, somehow, the urge to correct Nigel’s assumptions with paragraphs of proof.

"A lot of people like fiction," Adam ventures. "No charts in fiction. Maybe in some stories, but I don't read fiction, I don't really like it, so I only know a few books and they have no charts. Just words to describe everything and you imagine it all yourself."

"Why don't you like it?" Nigel asks, swallowing his mouthful, reaching for his mug. He watches as Adam tries to catch the last of his cereal floating in the milk with careful tilts of his spoon.

"Charts are logical. Minds lie," Adam says. "If I imagine something wrong, I have no way of knowing I did, and no way of knowing after if how I saw something is how it happened. It gets confusing. I like some writers, they don't use language that has layers, it just makes sense. I like those. But you use layers, it will make sense to you."

“Maybe.” Nigel sweeps up the last forkful of eggs into his mouth before he stands, snatching up Adam’s mug to refill them both from the kettle. “I never saw the point. Reading made-up stories,” he adds, clarifying for Adam. “Seems like a waste of time to read about a bunch of shit that never happened.”

“You could read non-fiction, maybe not about space. Maybe something about gangsters, real stories from history.”

Nigel could have Adam on the floor for it, and sends him a quick grin across his shoulder.

Adam.

His Adam.

Strange and thoughtful, smart as fuck and straight-forward. He acquiesces without simpering. Seeks out resolutions that make sense without just looking out for his own ass or what he thinks will make Nigel happy. Nigel imagines for a moment that if it came down to a fight between Adam being agonizingly rational and preserving Nigel’s own feelings, it would be the first fight Nigel lost in more years than he can remember.

He brings their tea back to the table and despite the little moue as Adam examines the previously used teabag, Nigel sinks his arms around the younger man’s shoulders, and kisses a brusque line down his cheek.

“Find me a book, darling, and I’ll read it for you.”

Adam frowns, then smiles, then frowns again, undecided if he is happy to have Nigel this way or if he’s being tricked into being quiet. People never make sense to him. Yet Nigel has also never lied to him, not in the way other people do. If he wants him to find him a book, then Adam will find him one, he has many.

He moves to get up from the table and finds himself held fast, tries again, and feels the same warmth coil in his stomach as had earlier in the morning when they had wrestled in bed. Something so strangely _good_ about being held in place without being told what to do.

“There are books on escape artists and historical gunfights,” Adam tells him, eyes on Nigel’s, watching the way they almost hood in pleasure, listening. “Books and books on criminals and masterminds. Books on fighting techniques and ancient ritual. Street smart books, not book smart books.”

Nigel doesn’t stop him. He listens to every suggestion, and though he probably won’t remember all of them, each one carries in it a curious understanding. Adam knows what makes Nigel tick - he isn’t foisting space shit or computer crap at him, he’s trying to find something that would make Nigel happy, rather than himself.

Right now, it is himself that makes Nigel happy, and Nigel spreads his hands down Adam’s chest, curling his fingers against the soft sweater.

“I’ll read whatever you bring me, baby,” he purrs against Adam’s ear, nipping lightly before letting his lips linger against his cheek. “What the fuck can’t you do, hmm? Fuck imagination. Fucking computer genius, fucking librarian, fucking spaceman -”

“Astronomer,” Adam corrects, tilting his head aside so Nigel can kiss his neck. “Amateur, but -”

“And a smart-ass, too,” Nigel grins. “And beautiful to boot -”

His eyes snap upward as a jingle of music plays from the bedroom. Of fucking course. Of course fucking now, nevermind that it’s still ungodly-fucking-early in the morning, nevermind that he’s got Adam’s soft tummy under his hands again, beneath his sweater, nevermind that Nigel can’t get a fucking day off.

He steps away from Adam and with long strides, stalks the length of the apartment. The burner is still rattling out its tinny song when Nigel finds it in his pants, and he answers it with a snarl of Romanian.

Adam leans back in his chair to watch him, not knowing the words, but hearing the same harsh notes resonate through this language as they do through English when Nigel finds one of his men not living up to expectation.

Adam licks his lip into his mouth, brings a hand down to slip beneath the hem of his sweater to touch his stomach as Nigel had been. Grabby and with no care for personal space, and Adam finds that he genuinely does not mind, that he genuinely enjoys the demanding predatory approach to just taking something. Because it always makes him feel good.

Adam pushes his chair back to take his bowl to the sink and wash their dishes. He leaves the tea, for now, cooling still, and he is sure he will find the mugs somewhere they don’t belong later but for now it doesn’t matter, for now he has Nigel smearing consonants against the little cellphone in his hand, for how he has the early morning and the entire city to watch. 

Adam goes to the main room and skims fingers over the spines of his books. Collected by his father first, then by him, more and more and more. Some he has not read, but he can count on one hand those that he hasn’t, he gets through books quickly devours information, absorbs knowledge. He selects a book from each of the genres he had given Ngel, some heavy, others small, and sets them on the corner of the table for Nigel to peruse when he wants to - if he wants to.

The harsh words grow more savage, the way Nigel would never speak to Adam again - he had, once, and it was the only time he saw the kid rattled. No, this tone is saved only for the laziest and stupidest that Nigel is confined to working with, and Adam is none of those things.

"Put him back on the phone," Nigel spits, a burst of accented English just as rough as the Romanian that he slips back into. He's done talking with the simpering pup whining excuses at him, forced by someone smarter to confess his idiocy to Nigel personally.

The torrent of insults and instructions don't stop, not even when Nigel leans from the room to see Adam, utterly calm, perusing his books. He tugs his pants up as he crosses the room, and snares Adam around the waist to squeeze him close again.

"I'll be back soon, darling." The words are soft, phone pressed to his ear and chattering at him as he smears a warm kiss across Adam's cheek. "I've got business."

Fists and fury.

Violence and vendetta.

Always the greatest weakness in any operation - words slurred in drunken bravado, bragging to the wrong person at the wrong bar. Someone talked, at what length will be clear soon enough, about the warehouse job. And it comes down to Nigel to make sure that it doesn't happen again.

It never fucking ends, not even on a quiet Saturday morning when all the man wants is to drag Adam back to bed with him. He snaps shut the phone with the man on the other side of it still in mid-sentence, and slips free of Adam to find his shirt, pointing to the laptop as he passes.

"Find it."

Adam tilts his head, curious and smart enough not to ask, and settles into the couch to pull the laptop up against his drawn knees. It’s a quick slide back into the code, into the depth of searches and proxies upon proxies to mask their location.

The container is missing but it isn’t gone. It can’t just be gone. Somewhere, somehow, even in parts, that container exists. And Adam will find it. He does not hear Nigel when he says his name, once, twice, before the man just gives up and returns to pacing the apartment. Circling it. Prowling. Hands over the things on shelves and small tables, never displacing them, or if he does, returning them immediately to where they were. 

“It’s not in America,” Adam mumbles, actually feels the motion of air as Nigel moves to stand next to him.

“We knew yesterday it wasn’t in fucking America.”

“Now we know for sure. That it is not in North America or South America.”

“It was never fucking meant to go to -”

“Do you want me to find it?” Adam flicks his eyes up, meeting Nigel’s before he blinks, just once, and the older man turns away to direct his swearing away from Adam on the couch.

“Yes, Adam, I want you to fucking find it.”

Adam enters something into the system and adjusts his position, shifting to settle on his stomach on the couch, laptop in front of him. Behind him, he hears Nigel curse again, pull a cigarette from the pack in his pocket and respectfully - despite the profanities that float around him like a smell - go outside onto the balcony.

He doesn’t entertain the passing thoughts of domesticity. Not with how welcome a warm breakfast was - any breakfast at all, really - and not with how satisfying it was to wake up next to someone who, from near as Nigel can tell, actually enjoys his company. Not with how quiet the winding side-street is, far enough away from the major avenues to muffle the relentless hum of cars with the cascade of wind through the trees - fucking trees - instead. This isn’t for him, this has never been for him, and as he sucks his cigarette down to the filter, he feels a dull ache in his hands.

There’s work to do, and his body knows it even as his mind tries to persuade him otherwise, but even that goes to waste when he comes back inside. Adam’s feet dangle above his ass, sprawled long and lithe across his belly, tapping in god-knows-what to the computer. He holds a finger between his teeth before placing it back against the keys, and the focus consumes him even from sweeping back the hair that’s fallen into his eyes.

So Nigel does it for him. A big hand across his brows, tugging lightly at the dark curls, down along the gentle slope of his spine to the rise of his ass, pert and perfect. Nigel squeezes, just enough to feel Adam squirm at the distraction, and leans low over him to kiss between his shoulders.

“Work. I’ll be back as soon as I’m done.” A pause, reluctant even still. “What kind of soda do you want, baby?”

“Orange,” Adam tells him, turning to allow his eyes to follow him across the apartment and to the door that is closed quietly, despite the tension that almost vibrates through the man otherwise.

The container isn’t in Asia either. A good chunk more of land they can exclude but Adam knows that Nigel doesn’t want to hear that. He doesn’t want to hear where it is not, he wants to know here it is.

So he arches back, stretches and tilts his head, and breathing a quick huff of air to flick a curl from over his eyes, he keeps typing.

There’s a curse from the hallway, and the door snaps open again. Nigel stomps across the apartment and grabs the first book from the stack that Adam set aside for him.

“Fucking subway ride from hell to get here, Adam.”

And with a click of the door, he’s gone again.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Whose blood is it?"
> 
> "Doesn't fucking matter. Go back to bed, darling, I'll come in when it's fixed."

“Adam.”

Nigel works his jaw, lips curving over his teeth. He tells himself to count to sixty, and by twenty he’s had enough of that.

“Adam!”

His voice rings out, only an incremental raise by his standards, but it’s enough that the name echoes down the hallway. The apartment building is entirely quiet at this hour, and Nigel wonders what the fuck people who aren’t Adam even do for work that they can afford to live here.

“ _Adam!_ ”

He jerks as the door opens from beneath his forehead, pressed against it in impatience, and a smile replaces the simmering irritation that was turning into a snarl. In one hand is a black plastic grocery bag, the other white and cheerfully emblazoned over and over with a bid of _please come again_. The white bag is held out, the result of New York being the only city in the world that keeps its corner stores open even at this hour of night.

Morning.

Whatever.

“I brought you soda, beautiful.”

Adam blinks, bleary and frowning, hair pressed in a way to suggest that he had curled up on the same couch he had been left on to keep looking. He steps back, enough for Nigel to get inside, enough to close the door behind himself and lock it. Adam takes the bag and sets it away on the small table in the hallway. He watches the way Nigel immediately slips his hand into his pocket, his other still wrapped in the black bag that pulls his skin white with the weight of what’s in it.

“I tried staying up,” Adam mumbles, draws a hand through his hair and yawns, shaking his head a little to bring the glassiness away a bit more. He will happily crawl back into a horizontal position and allow his eyes to close again. Happily allow Nigel to drag him there if that particular instinct of his needs to be fulfilled for it. “Where did you go?”

Nigel bristles. It’s not the question itself, but the fact that someone’s asking it at all. It’s his business where he goes, when he goes, and what he does. But the someone who’s asking is Adam, sleepy lovely Adam whose computer is still glowing bright from the couch, and Nigel feels himself settle again.

“I had work to do,” he says. “I had to go to the Bronx.”

He flexes his hand in his pocket but doesn’t retrieve it yet, not even to touch Adam and smooth his hair and then fuck it up beautifully again. Nigel steps past him towards the kitchen, flipping on the light as he goes, and only just bites back a curse at the dark spray - once red, now dried to brown - stiffening in speckles across the front of his shirt.

“I didn’t think I’d be gone all fucking day,” he complains, setting his bag on the counter and quickly working down the buttons of his shirt until he’s only in a white undershirt, thick with the smell of cigarettes and sweat. He probably should have stopped by the shithole where he’s staying before he came back, fetched a change of clothes into something he hasn’t been wearing for two days straight, but all he could think of was getting back here.

Getting back to Adam, who tried to stay up for him.

Nigel drops his shirt at his feet and pulls a bottle of vodka from the plastic bag, taking out the book to drop alongside it, a toothbrush, condoms, gauze. Fuck.

He considers the vodka, and calls out, “Got any rubbing alcohol?”

“I don’t know.”

Adam meanders through the rooms to the bathroom, a moment later trudges from there down the hall to the other toilet, just in case there is something in the small set of drawers in there, under the sink.

“No.” Another yawn and Adam’s back, in the kitchen and to the fridge, pulling out a bottle of water and moving to stand next to Nigel, setting his chin against his shoulder. His eyes flick over the items on the counter, his head tilts a little against Nigel’s neck and he hums, closes his eyes with a sigh.

Then something clicks, something pulls through and words correlate to meaning and Adam’s eyes open again. He glances down, to Nigel’s hands, to his clothes rumpled on the floor.

“Is that your blood?”

Nigel only distantly hears the question beyond the wonderful distraction that Adam provides him, his nose brushing against Adam's temple, lips grazing his cheek.

"Only some of it," he answers, entirely content until he feels Adam shift away from his shoulder, bright eyes taking in the spread across the counter again. "What?"

"So some of it isn't yours."

"That's what that fucking means, yeah."

Nigel feels the warmth fade, just like that, his brows knit in and he realizes he's got a fucking headache. If Adam doesn't keep rubbing alcohol, it seems fucking unlikely he's got any aspirin, though painkillers, Nigel has plenty. Not in the house, though, not in Adam's space - he doesn't need to tell Nigel that for him to know, when he's not even allowed to have fucking cigarettes without going to the balcony.

"Whose is it?"

With a snort, Nigel grabs the vodka and with a snarled curse in Romanian - its tone evident enough without needing to know the meaning - he twists off the top and upturns a splash of it over his hand in the sink. Dripping crimson that fades to pink against the pristine white, his lips draw up over clenched teeth.

"Doesn't fucking matter. Go back to bed, darling, I'll come in when it's fixed."

Adam makes a sound, displeased and small, and for a long few moments doesn’t move at all. He swallows, watches Nigel wash himself clean, curse at the pain of it, test his fingers in careful flexes to make sure they work.

Someone else’s blood. Someone who is not Nigel. Who is not Adam. Someone who did not lose the container, who might not even have been involved in this at all, but took the fall for it anyway while Adam had followed shipments and payments and codes on a screen. That blood isn’t from him, but Adam feels it like his own.

When he finally leaves the kitchen it’s to return to the couch and continue working, fingers faster on the keyboard now, eyes flicking back and forth between one page and another. Over and over. Eliminating port after port after port, setting aside any that have even a mild connection, that have even a possibility.

His breathing grows faster, but it isn’t in panic, it’s anger. Something unavoidable and uncontrollable and it comes and goes in waves as Adam keeps working, until he mistypes a code and with a groan, flexes his fingers before adjusting it back to what it needs to be. He does not hear Nigel come back, but by the time he smells the alcohol, feels the cool hands against his hair, Adam has discounted most of India.

For a few minutes, that’s all there is. The clatter of keys, the quickened breath. Soft hair and softer strokes through it, despite the swelling in Nigel’s knuckles that makes every bend at best frustrating, at worst painful. He watches not the stupid computer or the code across it, telling them - he imagines - again and again that the cargo is gone. He watches only Adam.

Adam who doesn’t hide his feelings - can’t, maybe, at all. When he’s confused, when he’s tired, when he’s happy or turned on or angry, it all shows bright as neon in his features.

“Adam.”

More clicking.

“Adam.”

More anger.

“Baby, enough.” Nigel drops onto the couch and shoves an arm under Adam’s back, grabbing him firmly around the middle to drag the kid into his lap. A quick hand snaps the laptop shut and shoves it the length of the couch, out of Adam’s reach, and he looks up to see Adam’s eyes, bright as stars. “You did enough today, just fucking stop.”

“I’ll find it.”

“I know.”

“I will find it.”

“I fucking know you will, but not tonight.”

Adam squirms before just resigning himself to being held by someone who won’t relent anyway - the energy expenditure isn’t worth it. He doesn’t say anything, keeps his lips pressed firmly together as his mind continues to turn over and over the events he doesn’t even know about. Nigel’s heart is surprisingly slow against his back, not as it is when he’s relaxed but when at rest, enough that he slowly draws Adam’s to match.

“Did I do that?” He asks eventually, tone low, tired, and he turns his eyes to Nigel where they sit, earnest and curious and angry, still so angry at himself. 

He’s never lost a container before.

He’s never messed up a job before.

Not with Nigel, not with anybody.

Broad hand pushing beneath his sweater, Nigel rubs firm, slow lines across Adam’s soft stomach. The same against his thigh. Just as careful in the kisses that press over Adam’s back.

“Did you do what? The fucking container?” Nigel snorts softly. “No. It wasn’t your job. All you had to do was track it, someone else fucked up.”

“Not the container.”

Nigel lifts his eyes again, swallowing back the frustration that tightens his throat. “What, then?”

“Did I make someone else get hurt,” Adam asks, and the firmness of his voice, however gentle he is, is enough that Nigel would rip his own heart out with his injured fucking hand if Adam asked for it.

“No. Adam. No - you - fucking no,” he insists, and mindless of the swelling that makes it hard to close his hand, he grasps Adam by the hips and with an awkward readjustment, turns the kid to face him. He presses one hand to his cheek, the other through his hair, not forcing eye contact but forcing him to listen. “It had nothing to do with the fucking container, baby. It had nothing to do with you. I swear to god, Adam.”

It’s not enough, not when Adam’s brow is lined with guilt and worry, not when his breath is still shorter than it should be.

“Sometimes people - fucking _weasels_ \- think they’re hot shit. They talk. They talk about things they shouldn’t fucking talk about and need to be reminded that some things don’t need fucking discussion where anyone could overhear it.” He smooths his hand, wrapped in gauze, over Adam’s hair again, as if nothing’s wrong with it at all, to ease his worry, to see him soften again, Nigel hopes, god he hopes.

A hum and Adam’s brows furrow before they relax, an expression resigned but no longer that anguished upset that Nigel could feel pulling at his skin. He doesn’t say anything but he leans into the touch against him, keeps his eyes on Nigel before directing them away with a sleepy blink, a sigh, and an easing of his weight against him.

He doesn’t tell Nigel that he was worried, for the blood that was his, for how he had gotten it, for the possibility that he could have given more, been left there, not come out the victor, for once.

He doesn’t tell him.

It doesn’t matter when he’s _here_ now.

“This is why you deal with people,” Adam sighs, feels the shiver of a laugh against his chest when Nigel allows himself to make the sound, warm, up his throat, past his lips. He holds the younger man as close to him as he can, pressing against his back, mouth against his chest, thighs splayed over his lap. A welcome weight, necessary nearness.

“Bullshit,” purrs Nigel. “You could do it, if you wanted to.”

Wrong answer.

Nigel kisses Adam wider, warmer.

“But you don’t have to,” he amends, fingertips touching beneath the hem of Adam’s sweater. “That’s why you have me - to take care of shit like this so you can use your hands for better fucking things than teaching lessons to idiots.”

Nigel wonders if this is self-consciousness, and as much to distract himself from the unpleasant focus as Adam from the conversation that’s entirely fucking inappropriate for him, he takes up Adam’s hands in his own, and presses a kiss to one palm, and then the other. His lips linger, tongue touching just the tip to skin, before he works slowly down the length of slender fingers, eyes drifting closed.

“Fucking gorgeous, Adam.” He sighs against the younger man’s fingertips. “I missed you today.”

Adam curls his fingers over Nigel’s face and just watches him, his words warm and slowly growing to be familiar. He likes the pet names, he likes the affection, unusual for him to get so often, constant, from the same person. He has missed him, despite the displeasure of seeing him come home bloody, despite the knowledge that he had willingly caused pain, perhaps enjoyed it.

There is something entirely secure about Nigel.

Adam allows his hand to be held, for the lips to move to his wrist now as he sits closer and presses his forehead to Nigel’s, then his nose, then kisses him, warm and long just to feel him tense and relax immediately beneath him.

He likes knowing he has been missed.

He likes knowing that Nigel would willingly return to him, not his own apartment, but to him, to spend the night again. He could have not come, but he had. And amusingly -

“You bought a toothbrush," Adam smiles.

“I needed one.” Nigel’s smile catches beneath his eyes before they slip closed, and he nuzzles alongside Adam’s nose again, seeking his lips and spreading liquor burn and dry smoke across them.

Adam, coy whether he means to be or not - doesn’t matter to Nigel, really - tilts his head aside to feel Nigel’s mouth against his cheek. “You didn’t have one?”

“Not here,” grins Nigel, and as he runs his hands beneath Adam’s thighs, there is a curious peace that comes over him, so prone to lightning strikes of violence and anger that rises like a flood, sweeping away all reason and restraint. This is easy. Adam is easy. And Nigel has no intention on being back in his own shithole apartment any time soon.

He doesn’t ask if it’s okay. None of that _what is this_ and _are we together now_ and _what happens next_. The answers could only ever end up as they are now, entirely together - Adam is his and there are no questions needed to clarify that.

There’s a grimace as he frees a hand to drop the computer unceremoniously to the floor, another flinch and sharp curse as he grabs Adam’s legs again to keep him on top as Nigel sprawls long across the couch. He flexes his hand, split skin leaking rosy across the gauze already, certain it’s not broken, but it hurts like hell even as Adam takes it in his own graceful fingers.

Nigel draws it away again, but brushes the backs of his fingers against Adam’s cheek. That isn’t for him to see - it isn’t for him to worry his gorgeous head about, all that tired, ugly business - and he draws Adam down to kiss, surprised as always by how smoothly Adam’s mouth flows against his own. He wouldn’t have expected it, still doesn’t really, and it swells in him, hot and eager for more.

“All day, I thought about you, gorgeous.” Nigel’s words are rough against Adam’s ear, lip curling in a pleased snarl as Adam shivers against him. “All fucking day, all I wanted was to be next to you.”

Adam goes, unfurling himself to stretch over Nigel’s form, one leg between his own, the other out flat against the couch. Adam shivers again, at the tone, the warmth, the profound need there that he can feel between his legs, between their bodies, even as the words just slip cool over him like water. Welcome, pleasant, so wonderfully good.

"I'm glad you came back," he says. And he means that. He has no pretty words to dress that up in, he missed the man and is happy he returned. He doesn’t mind the gruffness, the swearing, the smell of cigarettes and alcohol that lingers now. He associates it with Nigel. The smell makes him smile.

He wriggles out of his sweater when Nigel tugs at it, lets it be tossed to the floor and presses close against the warm hair on Nigel’s chest, nuzzling his neck, lips to his jaw, up to his mouth. There is that nervousness tickling beneath his skin again, the pleasant sensation that drives Adam to coil his body, rub down against Nigel's. 

"And now you're here. With your scars and your vodka and your toothbrush," Adam smiles, ducking his head to mumble against Nigel’s throat. "And condoms."

“Nosy shit,” chastens Nigel, a fond rumble that carries vibrating against Adam’s parted lips. He’s pleased that Adam hasn’t gotten all squinty-eyed and short-breathed about it - there was at least some distant chance, Nigel imagines, of that happening. But he’s warm and heavy and half-bare and smiling that gorgeous little smile and Nigel wraps his arms around Adam’s skinny body.

“Do you want to use them?”

The question is, as ever, wholly innocent, but Nigel blinks and considers the ceiling. “I wouldn’t have fucking bought them if I didn’t.”

“Oh.”

Adam’s kisses work downward, over the tattoo that displeases him however minutely, further and further until he tangles his lips against the hair on Nigel’s chest, tugging aside the thin undershirt he wears. Nigel presses his tongue between his lips and manages a laugh, rubbing his eyes.

“Do you want me to use them, darling?”

“You bought them, so they’re yours,” Adam replies, reasonably, and Nigel tucks the side of his fingers beneath Adam’s chin to lift his head.

“With you, Adam, fucking Christ - do you want me to use them with _you_.”

Adam blinks, and Nigel watches the way the blush slowly takes him, like a developing photograph. Pink over his nose, freckles stark then and then alone, almost invisible otherwise, and down to his cheeks, down further still, jaw and throat.

"Oh."

The thought had occurred, Adam has thought about it. He knows how sex works, what the mechanics are, how to coordinate limbs and what goes where, when it's two men and not a man and a woman. And he has thought about it with Nigel, gruff and crude and beautiful as he is. He trusts him enough. His hands feel good. His mouth feels good. And waking up to him in the morning had been comfortable, Adam had not immediately wanted to push him from his space, turn away, find his own.

It's an unusual sensation. Strange new feelings.

He shifts a little, rubbing them together enough to pull a groan from Nigel, to pull a zing of electricity up his own spine.

He decides.

"Yes.”


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Adam is special.
> 
> Adam is _his_.
> 
> And that’s all that fucking matters, really.

Nigel lets loose a long, low curse in Romanian, shuddering up from where his belly grows tight at the words, crawling up his spine and purred vicious against Adam’s ear. He curls his uninjured hand tight in Adam’s hair and brings their mouths together, a hungry want in every crush of their lips, every slow spread to allow their tongues passage to the other.

He doesn’t normally bother asking, the women who end up in bed with him know why they’re there. Fuck, for that matter he doesn’t normally bother with rubbers except when he doesn’t know the girl or she won’t let him put it in her ass. But Adam’s not a strung-out tart who’s after his drugs more than his cock. Adam’s not a stripper who gets as much out of the arrangement as Nigel does - more, sometimes, depending on how much effort she wants to put in to earning his money.

Adam is special.

Adam is _his_.

And that’s all that fucking matters, really. It doesn’t matter that he’s a him. It doesn’t matter that Nigel’s never had any interest in fucking a man in the ass before. It doesn’t matter that he’s beat the daylights out of idiots for implying that he would. He doesn’t want to fuck men, he never has, but god, he’s never wanted to fuck anyone as much as he wants to fuck Adam.

Nigel releases Adam’s hair and shoves his hand between them instead, rubbing firm against the stiff tent in the younger man’s pants. “Tell me,” Nigel grins, watching as Adam’s spine curls and he rocks himself harder against Nigel’s palm. “Let me hear you say it, gorgeous.”

Adam makes a noise, a little thing in his throat and allows his eyes to close to feel how good it is to have Nigel touching him again, especially this way. He curls and bends into it, hears the way Nigel’s breathing quickens, just watching. And Adam can understand that, just watching is what he normally does, quiet and aware.

But this is better.

“I want to have sex with you,” Adam says, voice wavering just a little, enough to be a pretty lilt before he swallows, ducks his head to nuzzle his forehead against Nigel’s shoulder. “Use the condoms… that feels good, please keep doing that.”

Adam understands that it’s not seductive, that it’s wooden and feels heavy on his lips, but he can’t twist and turn words like Nigel does, he can’t work them to his whim to be pretty. It’s why he doesn’t like using them often, it’s why when he wants something he will ask, frankly, or he will find other means to show that.

He parts his lips over Nigel’s skin and moans quietly, drawing his fingers down his chest and leaving light pink marks where his nails dig down.

The words echo, stirring Nigel harder beneath Adam. His words pull a throbbing need through him, shoved against the back of his hand still pressing to Adam’s cock, rutting with raw animal desire for the younger man who speaks with such sweet honesty that it almost feels wrong for Nigel to want him as badly as he does.

Almost.

“Fuck,” snarls Nigel. He jerks his hand from between them and holds Adam around the waist, kissing him scarlet, teeth against his lips, tongue easing the swell of them. With a grunt, Nigel works himself to standing, dizzy from the rush of blood far from his head, and carries Adam into the kitchen, his toes skirting across the floor as they go.

The box of rubbers comes with him, and just as gracelessly, he drags Adam back to the bedroom, growling low when the younger man’s nails work into his shoulders.

There is something about being handled, so easily grabbed and carried and moved, that has Adam squirming in pleasure against Nigel before he’s even deposited on the bed. He pushes himself back towards the center of the bed, finds Nigel following like cat would something it’s stalking. He’s graceful, strong, and Adam’s laugh pulls from him before he can do more than press his lips over it to stop another one, brows up.

Nigel stops, a teasing smirk on his face, one of his own eyebrows raised, settled between Adam’s drawn knees. Adam swallows, leans back to not let Nigel kiss him, smiles.

“Did you want me to wear it?”

Nigel’s hands are already at Adam’s pants, working them open and tugging them down his hips with a quick jerk. He drives his mouth against Adam’s stomach, sucking when Adam’s muscles tense beneath his mouth, and he stops only long enough to pull his own threadbare undershirt off over his head.

“Wear what, baby?” He presses his palms up Adam’s stomach, across his chest, down his ribs and sinks low again to drag damp kisses over every inch of Adam’s torso. “I don’t want you to wear anything at all. Fucking ever, if I can help it.”

Pants tangled around his knees, Adam squirms as much to free himself from them as to meet the heat of Nigel’s mouth. “The condom,” he answers, breathless, blushing with arousal. “So we can have sex.”

It’s enough to shiver another moan from the older man, who - tired of the fucking fidgeting - works Adam’s pants down off his feet, pulling off his socks in turn. The rest of Adam’s words sink in slowly, like they usually do - can only get hit in the face so many fucking times before you start to hear things with a bit of a delay - and Nigel sits back on his knees. Adam’s body is nearly bare, cock caught in the confines of his tighty-whities, pale but for the rosy ridges of blush that warm him.

Finally, the words reach Nigel, amidst the buzz in his ears.

“The what?”

“The - the sex?” Adam tries, as lost as Nigel.

“Before that.”

“The condom?”

“What about it, darling?”

“I’m supposed to wear it.”

Nigel’s lips thin. Adam’s a fucking angel, messy hair and bright eyes and perfect plush lips parted and damp. But he’s a fucking angel who’s got the wrong idea. Maybe. Yes, Nigel decides. No. Wrong idea. No one’s putting anything up Nigel’s ass, probably not even Adam, and Nigel distantly recalls the one hooker who tried with a slippery finger and found herself out a night’s pay for it.

He runs a hand along Adam’s bare thigh, rubbing gently. “I thought you wanted me to wear it,” he attempts, careful now to keep his voice soft.

Adam blinks, turns into the touch and sets his feet to the bed properly, curling his toes. He allows the words to process, slowly settling in like Tetris until they make sense and he smiles. He knows the dynamics. He knows how it works. He doesn’t have to wear it today.

“You can wear it,” he says, no argument, no upset, just a shift in understanding, quick and controlled, before he leans in to kiss Nigel almost sweetly, worried the frown would stay unless he did. And it seems enough, to have him lowered to the bed properly, held there and caressed, warm knuckles, soft gauze, rough fingers and the promise of light marks where fingertips press too hard.

Adam doesn’t mind. He arches up into them.

He curls one leg over Nigel’s hip, then the other, rutting up and sighing breathless into the kiss Nigel gives him.

For a time, it’s enough to rub. Cocks brushing rigid together and pulling gasps between their mouths, grinding slow against the other’s hip, the join of their thigh, wherever there’s contact it’s a rush between them both, up from their groins and into their lungs to force small sounds, high and sweet, low and rumbling. Nigel’s fingers spread over Adam’s smooth chest. A nipple peaks and he rolls it between his fingers, dark eyes heavy-lidded to see the redness wash across Adam’s cheeks again.

It’s the first time Nigel’s considered himself lucky to get to fuck someone, rather than the other way around. Even the word - _fuck_ , his favorite word - seems wrong somehow for what he wants to do with Adam. He doesn’t want to just take him, satisfy himself and collapse. He doesn’t want to hurt him, and he’s not sure that it won’t.

Worry is a rare enough thing for Nigel that he doesn’t immediately disregard it, but lets it guide his hands softer as he removes Adam’s underwear and grip the length of his cock, tugging slow against the silken skin that’s so hard for him.

He glides it past his lips, down between Adam’s spread legs, the saltiness familiar now and not wholly unpleasant. Far less unpleasant, too, when Adam bucks up against him and pushes himself deep into Nigel’s mouth, brushing the back of his throat. Broad hands hold his hips down so he doesn’t choke, but soon slide to cup Adam’s perky ass instead. Nigel squeezes the soft skin, spreads him a little wider, and decides in a moment of profundity:

 _Fuck it_.

Adam’s eyes are closed, breathing warm and quick between his lips and he settles a hand in Nigel’s hair, makes a little noise of displeasure when he pulls away so quickly, and immediately jerks back from the next touch he feels against him.

“Nigel -”

He is fairly sure tongues are not meant to go there, it is not done, it’s wrong, it’s weird… and it feels so damn good.

“Nigel, don’t -” But as honest as his words may be, laced with guilt and worry and confusion, the tone is clear enough and speaks the opposite. Adam squeezes his toes together, splays them, tries to breathe properly and finds he can’t. His entire body falls from hot to cold to hot again, goosebumps over pink skin come and go in waves Adam can’t control.

He can’t control anything.

The sounds he makes grow increasingly more desperate, weak and low and trembling through his throat. He breathes Nigel’s name again but that’s as much as he can manage before he needs to hold it in his lungs.

It’s not so different than eating out a girl, Nigel supposes. Muskier. Sweatier. But every sound that his tongue works out of Adam is worth it, stroking across wrinkled soft skin, closing his lips against Adam’s opening to suck. He nearly bucks off the bed when Nigel does and Nigels snares his arms around Adam’s skinny legs to spread him and hold him in place. He turns his eyes up, past twitching cock and trembling belly and heaving ribs and watches Adam’s throat work in a hard swallow, lips parted in silence now but for the breath that trembles out of them.

He grins and ducks his head again. Pressing the tip of his tongue inside, working open the taut muscle that seems to give way for this, just as Adam’s voice gives way on a high, wordless whimper.

It’s far fucking better than eating out a girl, he decides, and when he’s worked Adam wet enough that Nigel’s chin is slick with spit - wiped away quickly - he moves up the length of the kid’s trembling body again to nuzzle beneath his jaw. Rubbing a hand between his legs, he teases with a finger, slow circles, dipping in, and all the while he watches.

For someone who revels in his vast ability to cause pain, Nigel’s fucking certain he’s never cared so much about not doing so as he does right now.

“You taste so good, gorgeous,” he murmurs, voice deeper, raw where he bites against Adam’s throat. “You’re fucking beautiful. Goddammit, Adam, I want to -”

Fuck you?

No.

 _Make love_ to you?

No.

Simple. Straight-forward.

“- I want to have sex with you so fucking bad, baby.”

Another whine, needy and little, and Adam ducks his head to press closer to the man against him, hands up over his shoulders, drawing through straight hair, tugging it and letting go again. He hums when Nigel presses a finger in, just one, and it doesn’t hurt, the residual pleasure coursing so hard through Adam he grows cold from it makes it feel genuinely good.

He tries to press his legs together, just for the sensation of being so surrounded by the man, and finds one thigh held down by Nigel’s weight, the other pressed back out with the tips of strong fingers, as Nigel keeps stroking and stretching and touching him.

“You’re -” A sigh, little, and a swallow, before Adam licks his lips, lays back more. “- you’re going to be bigger than that.”

“Yeah, I fucking am,” Nigel purrs against him, strokes a thumb up against the silky skin of Adam’s balls and feels the tiny twitches ratchet through his body until Adam eases them back down.

“You might need to use more fingers,” Adam suggests quietly, bearing down against his hand now, lifting his head as though to see, catching Nigel’s eyes instead, with a grin.

“Fucking anything for you, okay? Fucking anything.”

Nigel’s hard enough to cum just from Adam’s words, his willingness and his insistence on wanting this. On wanting Nigel, of all the fucking people in the world. He’s not even trying to talk dirty but it has all the same effect, and Nigel would move the fucking world for him if Adam thought it reasonable to ask for it.

He wouldn’t, of course. Of course he wouldn’t. He’s only asking for this, and this, Nigel can give him now.

Nigel tugs gently around the taut circle of muscle, amazed by how tight he is, how searing hot around Nigel’s finger. Slowly, he introduces a second spit-damp finger, a profound patience suddenly when it comes to this, to Adam, to his beautiful darling whose eyes are closed to see the stars behind them, teeth set against his kiss-reddened lower lip.

Gentle presses, slow pulls, a spread wide works Adam open, and Nigel reminds him to breathe, to relax for him. He’s not going to hurt him and Nigel tells him so. He’s beautiful and Nigel tells him so. He fucking loves him and he tells him so, and doesn’t give a shit who knows it so long as Adam does.

Two days since he pinned Adam against the water-warped walls of a dump in the Bronx.

Two days and Nigel could die a happy fucking man when Adam’s arms pull tight around his shoulders.

He curls his fingers, brushing a taut little nub of muscle or tissue or who knows what, and Nigel blinks when Adam’s lips part on a cry.

“Fuck,” he breathes. “Fuck, baby, did I hurt you? Tell me if it hurts. Tell me to fucking stop and I will, darling.”

“No.” Breathless, eyes wide, almost unseeing, and Adam’s lips curl up in a grin as he laughs. “No, no, please, again, do that again, do that - _oooh_ -”

He shivers, hands down to grasp the sheets as Nigel keeps touching him, stroking over his prostate, and Adam understands, now, why this is such a common practice, why so many men do this. Because it feels so good. Because he wants to do this again, and often. His body jerks in spasms of pleasure, but his motions are languid when he wraps his arms around Nigel again, pulls him close, groans and grins and trembles.

“You didn’t hurt me, it feels so good, it’s - Nigel it’s so good…”

He draws his knees and straightens them, digging his heels into the bed to push himself back a little when the torment grows almost unbearable.

“You,” he sighs, “you now.”

Adam fucking Raki.

Nigel turns his head aside with a forceful kiss, another, grinning against his cheek until Adam laughs and pushes against his shoulders. He sits back on his heels, savoring the sight again of Adam spread-legged and licked wet and wanting, somehow entirely innocent and completely fucking debauched all at once. A wanton, wanting thing that couldn’t be less genuine if he tried.

It’s a battle with the box, another with the length of rubbers that pulls out of it. Nigel tears one open with his teeth. Despite being so distracted at the store at the remote possibility of fucking Adam that he nearly got an erection right in the aisle, he was somehow smart enough to get lubricated ones, since he simultaneously wasn’t smart enough to get actual lube. Fuck it. Adam’s nearly dripping with spit, anyway. The condom slides on slick over Nigel’s thickness, and he gives it a test stroke - then a few more, just to watch Adam watching him do it - before he crawls along the length of Adam’s body and pulls a leg up over his hip.

“If it hurts too much, you fucking tell me to stop, okay?”

“I will,” shivers Adam, arms around Nigel’s neck once more.

“Fucking promise me you will, baby. I don’t want to hurt you.”

“I promise, Nigel, please -”

He settles, heavy, and grabs himself to guide slowly, so fucking slow he can hardly stand it, voice rupturing in a rough Romanian oath against any god listening them as Adam’s heat surrounds him.

The stretch is unusual, grows tight and sore quickly and Adam’s breath hitches before he just holds it, releasing a long breath, a whine along with it, when his lungs burn too much. Nigel stops moving. 

Adam can feel his pulse between his legs, in his throat, against his eyes but not in his chest where it belongs. He sees stars when he closes his eyes and it’s so calming, so warm. He digs his fingers into Nigel’s chest and pulls him closer, coaxes with little sounds and warm breaths and nuzzling, so intimate and close, that even when his voice hitches in pain he still pulls Nigel closer, still wriggles down against him to hold him there, right there, deep and hot and so, so full.

“You’re really big,” he sighs, dropping his head back, smiling when Nigel kisses his throat, shivers when he bites it. Adam squeezes his muscles around him and relishes in the volley of curses against him as Nigel holds himself still. So Adam does it again. Does it again until Nigel’s growl grows deeper and he pins Adam to the bed and presses their foreheads together.

“Adam -”

“Does it feel good for you too?” Adam asks, eyes barely open, smiling. “It’s really tight, I will hurt when I walk later. I like it. Do you like it?”

"Good? Fucking _good_ , Adam?" Nigel ducks his head with a rich laugh and closes his mouth against Adam's again. "You feel fucking incredible."

The words are sighed, shaking, but it sounds like a growl. His shoulders dip, muscles unyielding beneath Adam's hands, and his broad back curls as he presses deeper, further, _more_ until Nigel's buried to the hilt. Every little stretch and shiver tugs hard against his cock, every splay and curl of Adam's brilliant fucking fingers makes him moan.

"You're so fucking tight, darling - fuck." Back arching, Nigel works himself out a little, in again, shallow thrusts because to be perfectly fucking frank, he doesn't need any more than that when it feels so good already. "You like it a lot? My cock inside you, filling your ass so fucking tight. Do it again, gorgeous, squeeze for me -"

"Okay," laughs Adam, a weak and beautiful sound as he arches his chest up against Nigel's, and tightens. "Your - your cock? Your cock is - it feels so big -"

The praise pulls at Nigel just as hard, coils in his belly so fiercely it's like he's been punched - that he's big, that it's good, that this miraculous strange wonderful creature called Adam fucking Raki likes feeling Nigel inside of his gorgeous little ass.

"You can move more, Nigel. Please move more."

He does, oh fuck he does when Adam asks so sweetly. Rocking his hips back to push into Adam faster, one hand curled against his quivering thigh, the other next to Adam's beautiful hair to support himself. Nigel reaches past his silky thigh to slick his fingers over the head of Adam's cock, and their voices join in a shared moan.

Adam sees galaxies, his body shivers in a squirming spasm of pleasure and he holds onto Nigel tight as the other continues the quick pace, driving sounds and breath and clawing marks against his back from the young man beneath him. Adam twists, one way, another, and shivers, pulls taut, arches from the bed when Nigel hits that spot again and pulls a helpless whimper from him.

“Fucking beautiful,” Nigel groans, watching Adam as he does it again, as sinews stand stark against his neck, as his lips part in a wide ‘o’ and he makes no sounds, since he has drawn no breath for any. “Fucking beautiful, darling, look at you.”

“Nigel I -”

He ducks his head, teeth against that pale throat, sucking his pulse against his tongue as Adam sobs softly in his pleasure.

“Nigel, I’m gonna cum -”

The older man rocks faster, shorter strokes, and mirroring them in the quick turn of his wrist, he laughs against Adam’s neck. “For me, baby, please - I want you to fucking cum.”

Adam tightens, arms and legs and opening and throat all squeezing around Nigel as he spills not with a bang but with a whimper. Spurts slick between their bellies, drip down Nigel’s fingers, hot and sticky and perfect. He drags his mouth across Adam’s brow, salt sweat stinging against his lips, and when Adam finally draws a breath again, Nigel fucks into him faster, buried deep, until the bed is squeaking its protest.

A litany of praise and curses, all equally rife with adoration, stutters and growls from Nigel as his own body jerks to unsteady spasms. Toes digging into the sheets, he buries himself inside Adam, and as his orgasm uncoils hard enough to leave him dizzy, Nigel knows that there’s nowhere else in the fucking miserable world he’d rather be than right here.

Adam is trembling, body still out of his control, coursing with pleasure and relief and his smile pulls lazy and long, eyes closed. A hum vibrates through his chest and he tugs Nigel’s hair just to feel the man follow the motion. He's pliant, unsteady, and wants nothing more than to curl into a ball and sleep.

Adam makes a gentle fussy sound as Nigel pulls out and stretches, toes pointed and fingers curled before pressing the heel of his hand against his eyes to rub them.

"Keep those here," he mumbles, "with your toothbrush."

Nigel, to save his life, can’t stop kissing Adam. His breath is still wonderfully shortened, his heart stumbling over itself, but every curve and rise and slope and hollow of skin needs to be kissed, urgently and desperately. So he does, over and over, lazy things with wide-parted lips and hot sighs, languid licks and slow sucks. Neck and shoulders, chest and arms, down to the fingers that curl against Nigel’s cheek as he lifts his eyes.

Adam’s are closed beneath his arm, but it hardly matters.

“You liked it.” Statement, question, both probably.

Adam nods, smile inching wider, and Nigel grins.

“Who’d have fucking thought.”

Any of this, really, none of it makes a bit of goddamn sense, and Nigel’s far too fucking lazy now, limbs like liquid, to bother worrying about it.

With a deep breath and a groan, hands pressed into the rumbled sheets, back stretching, Nigel reluctantly sits back to tug off the condom still sticking to his cock. He considers just dropping it to the floor, but thinks better of it. Grudgingly, he drags himself on unsteady feet from the bed, kicking his clothes aside as he goes, and flushes the thing.

The fucking toothbrush is still in the kitchen. Scratching his stomach as he goes, Nigel reminds himself that it’s _his_ toothbrush, and it’s in _Adam’s_ kitchen, and now it’s the toothbrush that stays _here_. He grabs one of the untouched sodas as he passes by it, shoves his book under his arm, and turns off the lights as he goes. Adam is twitching into sleep, little sounds on every sigh. Nigel leaves the soda beside the bed, and floats the sheets up over him. He strokes Adam’s hair, and goes to brush his teeth.

None of it makes a bit of goddamn sense.

And Nigel couldn’t fucking care less.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is why you don’t get fucking involved. 
> 
> This is why you don’t do shit you can’t let go of quickly and set on its fucking way. 
> 
> This is fucking why Nigel was content to kick ass and take names and chew fucking bubblegum until Adam fucking Raki came along.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Chapter warning:** drug overdose and death (neither of the mains!)

“Where the fuck is it?”

“I don’t know, Nigel.”

“Well shit can’t just disappear,” the man next to him shrugs, but he is far from relaxed, shoulders up and hands in his pockets, protecting himself from any blows, verbal or physical, that might come his way, and will, inevitably.

“Motherfucking helpful, genius.”

“He is right,” Adam points out, tapping a few more keys to set another scan through the system, adjustments for spelling, this time, accounting for the random number generation Adam had set going on the registration. “That’s not how matter works. Something can’t just disappear, something else has to replace it. And this has not disappeared, it is lost.”

“Yeah, or up the nose of some junkies in Amsterdam.”

“It is not in Amsterdam,” Adam calmly responds, following the code as it skims over the screen at speeds unfathomable for a human brain to read and recognize. Nigel had asked him, once, when Adam had dragged the fucking thing to bed, how he even understood it. Adam had pointed out that he just had to find patterns. One code pattern near another. _It’s all very simple._

In theory. In theory everything was fucking simple.

At the time, Nigel’s response to Adam’s endless explanations had been to slip further and further beneath the sheets. He made agreeable sounds as he listened and did not remotely fucking follow, until finally he took Adam’s cock into his mouth and made agreeable sounds there instead, and the kid’s words broke into little whimpers.

And he can’t exactly do that now, though he doesn’t mind thinking about it.

A strong hand sinks into Adam’s shoulder, and Nigel works his thumb into a knot he finds beneath his grip. Pressing it loose in gentle strokes, he watches the kid’s fingers fly over the keys.

“Orange?”

“What?”

“Orange soda, Adam, do you fucking need one,” Nigel snorts, and Adam nods without removing his eyes from the screen.

Other eyes shift, though, the handful of men scattered around the room in which they work. One atop the table, another slouched into a chair, the smart-ass who spoke out of line before slumped against the wall. They watch and they note and they hold their fucking tongues, because to use them now would be a test upon very thin patience indeed.

Nigel waits. He searches their gazes. And finally settles upon the smart-ass.

“You fucking heard him, fucking go.”

The guy groans, pushes himself to stand and curses under his breath. He has no idea where the container is either, but beyond packing the thing he doesn’t remotely care until the money comes through. But it’s the build-up, the pressure boiling and boiling like steam in an engine in Nigel until something finally tweaks him off enough to break faces. He leaves before that face is his, but makes it damn clear how happy he is about being errand boy to some twinky little hacker kid.

Adam’s eyes flicker at the sound of the door but he doesn’t jump. Not anymore. He’s grown used, over the months, to Nigel’s yelling, unexpected and brusque, has grown used to slamming doors and profanities. Another day in a life for him lately, really.

What does bother him, though, enough to tense his shoulders and set his jaw, is the tension in the room itself. He knows he is not well-liked, he is used to it from school, those looks and avoidances, deliberate use of double meanings he will not understand – he is not part of the team beyond the fact that Nigel wants him there. He is fairly sure he doesn’t know any of their names, or does, but not correctly.

He doesn’t turn to Nigel so much as lean back in his chair to feel him standing there stoic.

The man spreads his hand over Adam’s shoulder, resting it against the base of his throat. There is no threat in this - Adam knows it - but rather an insistent possession that Nigel could no more fight than he could the cursing that Adam bitches about so much. He strokes a thumb against the apple of his throat and without removing his hand, turns to face the others.

“What are you going to do about him, Nigel?” One of the men asks, and Nigel snorts.

“About who?”

“Tomasz.”

“The fucking snitch.”

“Yeah, but -”

“But fucking what? I expressed my displeasure fucking clearly. Crystal fucking clear. Not that he could fucking see it once his face stopped swelling up like a fucking dead pig -”

The man considers his response, jaw working as he watches Nigel watching him, choosing his words carefully so as not to receive a similar lesson in clarity.

“He’s still working for you.”

The silence is broken only by the flutter of keys as Adam works, and Nigel strokes his skin again when he feels the kid tense.

“He is,” agrees Nigel.

“After running his mouth about the job we ran on the warehouse.”

“To one of our own -”

“In public,” the man emphasizes, voice raising as must his pulse, in speaking so bluntly.

“What are you trying, fucking trying and failing, to fucking say?” Nigel demands, but the man pushes up from the chair.

“That you’ve gone fucking soft!” He snarls. “You and your fucking boyfriend –”

“We’re not –“ It’s quiet, enough that it’s immediately drowned out by Nigel’s snarling words, that his next attempt is just as effectively silenced by the man replying. The reassuring hand leaves Adam’s neck and he sighs, lips pressed firmly together.

“Say it again!” Nigel’s poised like a cat, bent forward yet entirely balanced against any attack, should it come. “Fucking say it again, I fucking dare you.”

“The first fucking thing you said, when you let me into the fucking team, was that anyone who talks once doesn’t fucking talk again.” The words are venomous, loud, and Adam’s fingers still on the keys for a moment and he flexes them, in and out over and over as the words continue, angry and hurtful and loud, so _loud_. “He’s fucking talked and from what I could hear, still fucking talking now.”

“The fuck are you saying then?”

“That you need to shut him up! You think others will just fall in fucking line if you leave this guy with a few broken bones? Bones heal, boss, they’ll learn that shit can slide.”

He isn’t wrong, and Nigel fucking knows he isn’t wrong. But mutiny is mutiny, and defiance is defiance, whether right or wrong to let it go unanswered is to invite an uprising. The man holds his ground when Nigel steps towards him.

“Who the fuck are you -”

“The only one with the balls to fucking say it,” the man answers, teeth set hard past curled lips. “First the job, all for nothing now that the fucking container’s gone. Then this, letting snitches walk free just because you banged them up? Everyone has noticed, Nigel. Everyone knows you’ve been blowing off and everyone knows it’s been because you’re busy blowing -”

Nigel snaps, hand shoved against the man’s throat with enough force to pin him to the wall. “Don’t fucking say his name. Do you fucking understand me? Don’t _fucking_ even _think_ his fucking name or I’ll snap your neck where you _fucking_ stand.”

“Do you have the fucking balls?” It’s choked but it’s no less defiant, no less angry.

This is why you don’t get fucking involved.

This is why you don’t do shit you can’t let go of quickly and set on its fucking way.

This is fucking why Nigel was content to kick ass and take names and chew fucking bubblegum until Adam fucking Raki came along.

“Don’t fucking test me,” he hisses, clenching his fist, pressing harder against the man’s trachea until he chokes, until he starts to grow red in the face from the pressure and lack of air. “And don’t you fucking question me. If I do something it’s for a fucking reason, and if I don’t _tell you_ what that fucking reason _is_ , it means your dumb fucking face is not ready to hear about it yet, or fucking ever. Am I clear?”

There is a sound behind him but Nigel doesn’t turn, just pulls back and shoves hard into the man’s throat again. “Am I _fucking_ clear?”

A nod, no air enough for words, and Nigel doesn’t step back. “As to what’s between me and him? Is between me and fucking him.”

He holds him. He holds him until he feels the man’s pulse thumping so quickly beneath his fingers that it’s a blur. He holds him until he’s fucking satisfied that his feelings will be made crystal fucking clear to whomever else wants to say anything about Adam fucking Raki.

When Nigel releases the man, he slides to the ground, choking down air in a rattled gasp and clutching his throat. The rest of the men say nothing - do nothing - but Nigel stretches as if to convey how ready he is to express his particular viewpoints to anyone else who would question them.

No one does, and Nigel turns back towards Adam just in time to see the door slip closed behind him. The computer runs, lines of text appearing steady as a clock’s hands as it searches without Adam’s skill in making it faster, without his keen knowledge to override when the computer is seeking in dead ends. Nigel watches it for a moment, lips pursed, and reaches to light a cigarette if only to give his hands something to do besides killing everyone in the fucking room.

The worry is immediate and profound and entirely fucking unjustified. Adam is capable. He is clever. He is skilled in ways Nigel couldn’t possibly wrap his fucking head around in a thousand years. And his absence is felt like the silence after a gun fires, a sucking vacuum.

If he goes after him now, it looks bad. It insults Adam and it solidifies the bullshit that was just spat at him by the idiot still on the floor. Nigel drags hard enough that the cherry on his cigarette crackles with the force of it, and he spews the smoke from his nose all at once.

“Where is he?”

No one speaks, and Nigel ducks his head, praying for the fucking fortitude not to smear their brains across the room from any unholy fucking god that will listen.

“Tomasz,” Nigel snaps, biting off the name. “Where is he?”

“The bar,” offers one of the men.

“His apartment,” says another.

Likely suggestions and diversions they’re grateful for, to send the man before them somewhere else. Nigel’s fingers close into a fist, bones popping as he does, old injuries and poorly set bones crackling like tinder.

“Find him. Tell him there’s a meeting.”

The intent is clear and both remaining men rise to go, passing the fourth on his return with a bottle of soda in hand.

\---

It’s fucking cold, and always more so by the water. But Nigel could care less, finding warmth in the cigarette between his lips, the thought of regaining his fucking team again after this. He wonders, really, what stayed his hand the first time. He wonders if he really is going soft because of big blue eyes and those fucking sounds that work their way through his entire body and do him in. He wonders why he’s not angry at the kid for making him this way. He should be. He should be over there making it clear what this is. He would with anyone else.

But everyone else isn’t Adam Raki.

He hears Tomasz before he sees him, kicking stones and cans and whatever else as he goes. The kid was a favor for a favor, honestly, a one time trial as Adam had once been but one that did not pan out, with the kid having no stomach for the job or the term ‘in confidence’ after. Useless, stupid, and not worth Nigel’s time again.

He supposes he could always ask another favor for another favor. Kids come and go, the city runs rampant with them.

“Little cold isn’t it?”

Smart-ass. Nigel meets the kid’s eyes - or tries, anyway. Tomasz skirts his gaze, nervous and twitchy. Some sort of junk, possibly. Some sort of stupid, definitely. Nigel flicks his cigarette towards the seething black water and sets his hands in his pockets.

“Face healed up,” he notes, dire amusement rippling in his words.

“Fucking nose is crooked.”

“Whose isn’t,” answers Nigel. “Look -”

“You gonna off me?”

“Am I fucking what?”

“I know why you call people out here,” the kid answers, narrow-eyed. Nigel considers the honesty of it, lips thinned, and then shrugs.

“Yeah, I fucking am. And you came anyway, you stupid shit.”

Now the kid shakes not from the chill wind that coils around them, but from an overload of drugs and adrenaline. “What the fuck else was I supposed to do? Fucking run? You’d find me.”

“I would,” Nigel agrees.

“And you’d make it even worse so just - fucking do it.”

Nigel sniffs, doesn’t move beyond shoving his hands deeper into his pockets and watching the kid shake some more.

He has no time for junkies. Certainly no fucking business with them.

He considers the gun, no one would care if the shot echoed over the fucking water, it would be just another damn day in the Bronx. The knife, maybe, messy and slow to show the kid what it means to fuck up. But even then the only message that sends is not to mess with Nigel by being a fucking idiot, not why. And it’s the why he needs to drive home. The reason for the fuck-up that lead to all of this.

He pulls his hand from his pocket and watches the kid flinch before snorting.

“I’m not going to fucking off you, you’re not worth the fucking effort to.”

The kid blinks and Nigel holds up the little bag in his hand. A handful, worth a fucking fortune out here if sold right, and the kid knows it.

“A fucking parting gift.”

Tomasz swallows, shakes his head and steps back.

“The fuck –“

“Because I’m fucking sentimental.” He can feel the gun against the small of his back, hooked into his belt, well within easy reach. “You sold me out for this, I want to see you fucking enjoy it. All of it. Right the fuck now. Learn what your greed means before you sell out for it.”

The kid takes it, snatching it from Nigel’s fingers before stepping away again. His narrow eyes grow wide, wider, they shine and Nigel curses, gaze rolling towards the starless sky, deep blue like a bruise and matte from the lights of the city. He doesn’t watch the kid fucking cry, big snotty tears that he tries to stifle, but he hears when the hitched breath becomes a snort, held long and deep, and he hears when the slip of plastic is crumpled and held back out to him.

“You’re a fucking bastard,” the kid tells him, swiping his hand across his nose, again and again, until he presses trembling fingers to rub instead and Nigel finally takes the baggie from him. He skims a finger around the dust left inside and works it into his gums, observing impassive as the boy’s shudders become violent tremors, as he crouches, as he sits.

“Nobody fucking trusts you,” the kid mutters. “Nobody believes your shit.”

“No?”

Nigel doesn’t get an answer, but wonders as to the truth of it, in light of the minor incident earlier at the safehouse. Maybe he is going soft, preferring to spend days in that fancy fucking flat, watching his hand stretch to nearly cover Adam’s pale stomach. Maybe he could live a quieter life, quit the fucking trade as amicably as he can manage, put some other poor fucking sap in charge and let them weather the relentless heat.

Maybe.

If this life wasn’t so goddamn satisfying.

He sets a booted foot against the kid’s back where he lays, twitching, and rolls him down the small rocky slope into the water. He bobs face-down, dead or unconscious, he’s not fucking moving anyway, and the river starts to carry him away. Nigel watches for a moment more, lighting a cigarette. He’ll drift downstream, get stuck on something, rot a bit, cause a big fucking fuss when some neighborhood brat finds him.

Another unfortunate incident, another wasted life.

Nigel seems to be surrounded by them.

But his conscience clear now, he strides back up the hill, letting his feet slide to smear his footprints in the mood, and the empty packet secure in his pocket. He takes his phone out as he finds the street again, cigarette bright enough to make him squint. No calls. No messages.

Fucking Adam.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This extra special bonus is chapter is courtesy [ShadowAngel](http://archiveofourown.org/users/ShadowAngel/) who wanted more Spacedogs as part of our [Commissions for Charity](http://wwhiskeyandbloodd.tumblr.com/post/112441086505/wwhiskeyandbloodds-commissions-for-charity-2k15) drive. Thank you so much, lovely - we appreciate your support and your comments, always, and we hope you all enjoy!!


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nigel hammers a hand against the door, just once, but enough that it echoes through the stairwell behind him.
> 
> “I can be fucking disruptive, Adam, I can be a fucking _nuisance_. I can be a fucking _nightmare_ and darling, please, darling don’t make me fucking do that.”

Adam is not at the safehouse, though the computer is still running through its scans, still flickering grey on black with a cursor Nigel doesn’t even want to touch, so he doesn’t. He lets it move and gather its data as he lights another cigarette and casts his eyes to the soda - now warm - and the puddle that was once condensation now damp against the old bumpy table.

It makes sense the kid would go home.

Nigel curses, lifts the bottle to flick the condensation to the floor and sets it again, before thinking better of it and taking it to the tiny filthy little fridge and fitting it in amongst the beer and leftovers.

Walking would take hours, and he doesn’t feel like subjecting himself to more people than necessary, already having had quite fucking enough of them for the day. So he hails a cab, climbs into the back and ignores the heavy sigh of displeasure when he lights up again, rolls down the window to make the driver’s life a little less shitty. He names the address and waits until they peel from the curb and flow seamlessly into the roads that never ease up or sit still.

Nigel wants nothing more than to see Adam again, hold him close and breathe in his soft, warm smell. Clean smell. One that is entirely Adam, one Nigel has found himself intoxicated by for weeks now. He just wants that. To breathe him in and carry him to bed and pepper him with kisses and sink into that boy’s incredible tight warmth and feel fucking _home_.

He takes the stairs slowly, finds the door, and gently knocks. Within, he can hear no sound, had seen no lights on in the windows and when he checks his watch he curses at the early hour. Too early to be up, too late for people like Adam to stay awake. No reason, really. Except that Nigel’s here, and he hopes that’s enough to soothe the displeasure on his sleepy, grumpy features when he finally opens the door.

But he doesn’t open the door. So Nigel knocks louder. Longer. Gently calls Adam’s name, then not so gently, until he hears Adam’s voice through the door, just loud enough over his knocking.

“If you knock any louder, the people living below me or above me will call the police. It’s rare we get activity like that this late at night, Nigel, it’s inconsiderate. You should go.”

He blinks, laughs out a curse and leans his forehead against the door.

“I thought you were sleeping, darling. Will you let me in?”

“No.”

The word sinks like a fist into Nigel’s gut.

“No?”

“No,” Adam answers again. “Go home, Nigel.”

“Baby -”

“You’re being disruptive,” Adam interrupts, and Nigel blinks at the door, the grain of it blurring so near to his eyes.

“I’m fucking _what_ , Adam?”

“I said that you’re being -”

Nigel hammers a hand against the door, just once, but enough that it echoes through the stairwell behind him. “I can be fucking disruptive, Adam, I can be a fucking _nuisance_. I can be a fucking _nightmare_ and darling, please, darling don’t make me fucking do that.”

There’s silence in answer, no breathing, no sounds of the lock being undone, nothing, and Nigel curls his fingers into a fist against the door and a groan rips from him, hurting his throat, searing his chest as it echoes on the landing.

“Are you done?”

It’s so surprising, so strangely authoritative that Nigel frowns and lifts his eyes a bit more as though he can see through the door to the kid that stands there, messy - gorgeous - curls and blue eyes.

“Are you gonna let me the fuck in?”

“Don’t swear at me, Nigel. I hate when you swear. You swear so much, it’s as though you can’t breathe without an obscenity in there and it’s tiring, it is very tiring to filter, Nigel, so if you want to come in, stop swearing. Just stop. Even for now, because I know you can’t, I understand that it’s not something you can change immediately, though I don’t know how it started, but I need you to stop. Just for now. Stop. Or I am not letting you come in.”

There’s that air of desperation again, when Adam seeks to build walls with his words so fast that no one can penetrate them, that no one can get to him and confuse him or worry or hurt him.

Nigel forces himself to take a breath. More to the point, he forces himself not to exhale it as a battery of curses. He doesn’t hit the door again but instead presses his hand against it, fingers curled.

“Breathe, baby,” he says, in as gentle a tone as he can fucking muster when all he wants is to rip the door from its hinges. He’s not seen - or _heard_ , in this fucking case - Adam get like this many times, but every time has sunk like knives into Nigel. For all Adam’s brilliance, his beauty, all the things that Nigel adores about the kid, the surplus of emotion is too much and it just builds until he can’t, in turn, stop the rush of it.

Every time, though, Nigel’s been able to stop whoever the fuck is upsetting Adam so much.

Every time except for now, when he’s the one who’s fucking doing it.

Bullshit.

“Darling, don’t do this when I’m out here - don’t fu- don’t leave me out here and make me listen to you do this to yourself. Just open the door and we can talk about whatever’s fu- piss-” Nigel swallows down the words like bile. “Whatever’s upsetting you. At least tell me so I can fix it, darling, is it the argument earlier? There won’t be any more, I fu- I swear it.”

He jerks when he hears the door unlock, lifts his weight from it so he doesn’t fall on Adam when the door finally swings open to reveal him. Nigel smiles, tired and ready to just fall into bed holding this kid. Adam doesn’t smile back. He is fully dressed, eyes dark and hard, and mouth set in a thin line as his chest rises and falls quicker than it should for him just standing by the door. There is a pink flush to his cheeks that usually is the result of Nigel’s clever hands and mouth and words. Now, for the first time in the months Nigel has known him, the young man looks livid.

“That’s not a promise you can keep, Nigel, you will argue again. You like to argue. You like to win arguments.”

“Adam –“

“Where did you go,” Adam asks him, voice quiet, still trembling a little with the tension from before. “When I left. You did not come to find me, I didn’t want you to come and find me, I was angry. I’m still angry. Where did you go?”

Nigel sets a hand against the door to stop it being slammed in his face again, and despite how Adam’s eyes flare wide, Nigel steps inside. He’s not going to do this in the fucking hallway, and he’s certain he’d do something fucking regrettable to that godforsaken door if Adam closed it again.

“Darling,” he begins, but Adam seethes, hands fisted at his side.

“Where did you go, Nigel?”

Quietly, Nigel closes the door. He locks it. He remains that way a moment more to count to ten and gather himself before looking back to Adam.

“If you didn’t want me to come and fucki- to come and find you, why the - why does it matter where I went or what I did? I stayed in the Bronx.”

“Did you kill the man you were arguing over?” Adam asks. Always surprising, even still, with how blunt he can be, with how precisely to the point. It’s almost endearing how angry he is, how he’s about to tell Nigel he’s wrong for doing it, why he shouldn’t do that anymore, but, strangely, never try to change him. He has never once, even when he has been upset, told Nigel to change.

Never for him.

Except for the cursing.

“No,” Nigel answers, but the answer feels like shit. It’s a half-truth, which makes it half a lie, and for all his myriad fucking flaws compared to Adam, he’s never lied to the kid - not once. Not even a half.

He steps further into the apartment, past the kid’s baleful gaze, and doesn’t give a fuck for the moment about the fancy fucking couches or the pressed tin fucking ceiling or the wooden floors or any of it. Quick hands seek out the cigarettes in his back pocket and snare his lighter.

“He killed himself,” he says instead, shoving a smoke between his lips. “I made sure it worked.”

Adam makes a sound, a small little moan of displeasure but doesn’t step close enough to remove the cigarette, doesn’t make the physical motion to dislodge it, and can’t seem to find the words to tell Nigel to stop.

“You made sure it worked.”

“Yes.”

“So you watched him die.”

“Yes.”

“You didn’t stop him dying. You watched him and you could have stopped him and you didn’t. You did kill him.”

“Darling -”

“You didn’t stop him dying, Nigel, you killed him.”

“Adam -”

“Do you think that’s what power is?” Adam asks suddenly, head tilting and blinking his bright eyes so the liquid in them shifts a little, not yet tears but close.

Nigel draws a deep breath, full of fire, and stands motionless but for the movement to take the cigarette from his lips. Smoke pools from his lips as he speaks, obscuring his expression but not the darkness in it. “You knew what you were getting into, darling -”

“Don’t.”

“You fucking knew -”

“Nigel,” grits Adam.

“Yes. Yes, Adam, I not only fucking _think_ that’s what power is - I fucking _know_ that’s what power is.” He steps closer, arms taut as bridge cables. “Not over him, the fucking rat. A junkie who wasn’t worth what he shoved up his ungrateful nose. But over every fucking man in that room today, all the others - now they _know_ what fucking happens when they run their mouths.”

His lips curl in a snarl that he soothes with a hard swallow. Nigel’s eyes close for a long moment, and open only slowly. “It was only a matter of time before he did it to himself, anyway.”

Adam does not step back, his nose wrinkles at the smell of smoke but he doesn’t move. His entire frame vibrates, in anger or upset, or something harsher still but he doesn’t move. He says nothing for a very long time, flicking his eyes up to Nigel’s only when he reaches for him, and that alone seems to make the man reconsider. Adam swallows, thick, enough that it clicks in his throat and parts his lips with the tip of his tongue.

“You fell to the pressure of someone else’s expectations,” he says softly. “Someone disagreed with you, so you proved them wrong. Because he told you to do it, Nigel, you killed that man. Because someone other than you thought it was a good idea, thought it would mean more, do more, prove something. He had power, then, not you. You were powerless, and because you were powerless you asserted it again by killing.”

Adam makes a sound, bringing a hand to his forehead to press there as though pushing away a headache. He nearly jumps back when Nigel’s hand sets to his shoulder.

“You are not stupid, Nigel, why do you do stupid things? Why do you endanger yourself and weaken your own operation, why don’t you think about it?”

Adam draws his hands through his hair and closes his eyes and presses his lips together with a soft sound of pain.

“Do you know, that I could undo your entire team, your entire operation, this entire business, with one click of a button? I could command the computer to release all stock free of charge in Burma. I could send it anywhere in the world where it will earn you nothing, where you will lose it, where it will be dumped into the ocean and never seen again. I could do that, Nigel, I could, with my silly computer and my codes. It would be so easy I could spell it to you, and you still would not understand how to fix it if I broke it.”

Tears are slick against his cheeks now, impossible to control when he’s like this, and he’s shaking harder, he’s shaking so hard his words shake with him, hitch his breath, and when he folds his arms over his front he bends with it.

“One container, you lost one container. We lost it. I lost it. It’s lost. And your business is falling apart - trust is gone, power is gone, people get angry, people get upset, people die for it all for one container, Nigel, all for one container.” Adam sobs and looks up again, not at Nigel, not directly, he can’t. “That container, that concept of a thing, has more power than you right now, and does nothing. Nothing, Nigel, but sit there and hold its contents. Nothing.”

Adam makes a sound like a pained animal when Nigel steps closer to hold him, and struggles, fierce and angry and violent, genuinely violent in his fear. Nigel stops, hands uplifted as if in surrender, cigarette hanging between tightened lips.

The threat smolders. An ugly thing thrown out in anger, Nigel tells himself, but that doesn’t make it go away, and it only burns hotter with the knowledge that Adam doesn’t let emotion speak for him. He could ruin him. This kid, this fucking kid Adam _fucking_ Raki could undo everything Nigel has gained for himself in this wretched city, and all the blood and misery would be for nothing.

“Forget the fucking container, Adam -”

The kid jerks away again, all but doubled-over, and Nigel can do no more than watch.

“Adam,” he snaps, if only to get his attention again through whatever hysteric din is buzzing him to deafness. “Adam, fucking _listen_ to me, _fuck_ the fucking container. I should have killed that fucking junkie when I found out he was talking - I didn’t, that was my mistake, and I have fucking rectified it. Don’t talk fucking crazy -”

“Don’t say that to me,” spits Adam. “This isn’t crazy, you -”

“Don’t _fucking_ threaten me, Adam, darling, please -”

Adam wails and brings his hands to his face again, sinking down to the floor in a sprawl, still shaking, still upset, breathing hitching dangerously close to him hyperventilating and Nigel cannot get close enough to even touch him without Adam jerking himself back.

“I’m not threatening you, Nigel, I want you to _listen_! Please, just listen, please just -”

“Okay. Okay, fuc- I’m listening. I’m all ears, Adam, I’m listening.”

Adam draws his knees up and holds himself together, rocking quickly and painfully against the hard wood floor, over and over until he finds a rhythm that seems to calm him, that clicks a certain switch in his mind and the panic subsides a little, even a little.

“Why would I threaten you when I like you so much?” He mumbles, voice still not his own, still higher, still pitchy and weak as he trembles, rocks, continues to move his body before it shakes itself apart. “I could destroy you with a button and I don’t want to. I never want to. I don’t need - I just - I can’t - it’s -”

“Breathe, Adam, you have to breathe for me, darling,”

“I want you to understand how easy it is to have power without being brutal,” Adam whispers. “I don’t want people to think you’re stupid when you’re not. I don’t want them to think you follow their orders or their whims because you don’t have to, you don’t ever have to, but you have to understand, you have to understand I have to find a way for you to understand and I can’t, Nigel, I _can’t_ my words are broken.”

It’s enough.

It’s too much.

Nigel wets his fingertips to crush out the end of the cigarette and tosses it to the floor, kneeling beside Adam. He shouldn’t care this much - he shouldn’t fucking care at all, after what Adam said before - but he hears what he says now, too, gasping too quick, too shallow, and Nigel snares him around the shoulders to pull him tight. Warm fingers work their way through sweat-damp curls, and he sighs against his hair.

“You’re not fucking broken, darling, please,” he murmurs, holding Adam tighter when he tenses, keeping him close when he tries to pull himself away. He rests his brow against the kid’s head and closes his eyes in fucking agony when Adam’s body stays rigid against him. “Fuck’s sake, Adam, breathe. Breathe and then I’ll listen to whatever words you want, alright?”

It takes a long time for breath to come at all, and it comes with sobs and shaking, it comes with whimpered little sounds and anguish, but it comes. Slowly, Adam’s shaking subsides to a gentle irregular trembling, he rests his face against his knees and doesn’t find the energy to push Nigel away from him as he wants to. As he thinks he wants to. He doesn’t uncurl from the ball he’s worked himself into, safe and small and unable to be hurt.

“They don’t know power,” Adam says finally, words muddled and muffled against his legs. “They don’t know power and you don’t know strong power so it gets confusing. It gets hard. I can explain it to you another time when I can talk and you can listen and not smoke in my apartment.”

Adam shivers again, just a lingering adrenaline surge that fades in his blood as soon as it hits it. He swallows, once, again, lifts his head a little and brings his fingers to wipe almost clumsy against his eyes.

“Please go home,” he sighs.

“Darling -”

“Now. Please.”

Nigel lifts a hand to wipe the dampness from Adam’s cheek, and finds that the kid only flinches when he does. His hand clenches, knotting into a fist, and he lowers it again. A small hand, soft and familiar, splays across his face when Nigel leans to kiss his cheek instead.

It isn’t a short fuse that ignites at this. It isn’t a sudden crack in too-thin ice. It’s something deeper - the groaning of a bridge when the cables start to break, the precarious creak of a building as its foundation gives way. A slow destruction, breath by breath, as Nigel feels the first waves of undoing rock him.

He releases Adam, arms screaming pain with how hard he held him, and how hard he held back from him. Nigel works himself to stand, nearly staggering, and carefully picks up the remains of his cigarette from the floor. He holds it between his fingers, watching it rather than the kid, and sighs.

“Adam, let me - let me at least fucking make sure you get to fucking bed -”

“I’ll get to bed,” Adam murmurs, a rejection without a rejection, another weak little request for peace and to be left alone. “Please. Just go. Just go, Nigel, go.”

That note of desperation tugs at the corner of his tone, just the start of it, and the threat of more of that pain, more of that panic, sends the older man back towards the door. Deliberate, slow steps in case Adam changes his mind, rethinks, reconsiders. And he doesn’t, even when the lock clicks open. He doesn’t as the door opens. He doesn’t answer to his name when Nigel calls it again.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nigel finds a bottle just as his phone bleeps with a message that he doesn’t bother to check. Not until he’s had as big a swing from this bottle as he had from the other. Then he pokes the thing until the screen lights up, until he finds what he needs and forces himself to read the message over and over. 
> 
> _I found it._

Adam spoke against brutality. Conquests made not by way of blunt force trauma, but with cleverness and patience. Power gained by skill rather than violence. Intellect and ability, rather than every other method Nigel has ever used to enforce his hold on what he has.

Adam said a lot of other things too.

Nice things, like that Nigel is smarter than people think he is.

He said that he likes him.

Nigel sucks down smoke, as if the conflagration of tobacco at his lips might burn away those words in kind.

Two weeks, three days, and some fucking number of hours it’s been since he heard from the kid. He either tossed his burner or he isn’t answering, regardless - Nigel’s spent most of that fucking unconscionable span of time trying to call him, and fighting back every impulse in his body not to just go and beat down his door. So far, it’s resulted in some regained ground for local sales, a shipment intercepted, and a broken hand.

Nigel regards it, wrapped poorly in boxer’s tape and still swollen to a dour purple outside it. First he’d caught it against a door during a particularly scrappy little fight with some snot-nosed shit from the outfit whose warehouse they robbed blind. He figures that fractured it, but he’d filled his nose dry with powder in response and hadn’t really noticed any pain. It was when he tried to call Adam again, and again, and again, and got only that same fucking automated fucking voicemail, that he’d put a hole in the wall and broke it properly.

Or would have put a hole in the wall, anyway, if it hadn’t been brick beneath the plaster.

He wonders if he should try to call him again. Dumps the idea. Convinces himself that if he’s drunk enough he won’t manage to stagger to his front door. Drinking it is. He’s sure he has… something in that fridge beyond the fucking soda he hasn’t drunk yet like some sick monument to something gone now.

Maybe he should just drink the fucking soda.

If anything, he can hold it cold against his hand while he drinks something stronger.

The computer had long ago stopped its coding, whatever Adam had set it to do it had done, and whatever access he had granted the last laptop Nigel had bought him was doing all the work now.

In his apartment.

Locked up.

Away from Nigel, fuck-dammit.

He starts, amusingly, with the soda. Flat, now, and atrociously sweet, but he chugs it, until his teeth hurt with it and his tongue weighs in his mouth like it’s made of stone. Then he starts to look for the shit that matters.

Nigel finds a bottle just as his phone bleeps with a message that he doesn’t bother to check. Not until he’s had as big a swing from this bottle as he had from the other. Then he pokes the thing until the screen lights up, until he finds what he needs and forces himself to read the message over and over.

_I found it._

The number isn’t known to Nigel, despite his phone still being the same piece of shit he’d had with Adam - just in case, waiting, always fucking waiting.

For this, he supposes. He hopes. He drinks again, a long enough pull that only the need to breathe stops him, and curses as he fumbles one-handed over the buttons.

_found what_

Nigel only realizes he’s standing again when he starts to move, long legs carrying him towards the heap of clothes on the floor to tug on a pair of pants. It’s a little fucking tough, with a phone in one hand and the other fucking broken, but he manages, jeans and a holey white tank top.

“Fucking come the fuck on,” he snarls at the blank screen, slamming a foot into his shoe, and shoving the other in just as violently. He knows, with all the instinct honed over so many years of _just fucking knowing_ , that it has to be -

_Your container._

He doesn’t even lock the door behind him when he goes. Let the fucking brats in the building try to rob the place, he’s got nothing he wouldn’t leave behind in an instant anyway. Hurtling out onto the street, Nigel finds himself nearly side-swiped by a southbound cab that skids to a stop when Nigel flags it.

Minutes are counted by the tapping of the phone against his knee, eyes stuck out the window wondering where the fuck that kid had tracked it down, wondering how, and wondering - more than even that - what the fuck good he has done, ever, to have Adam contact him again.

He tips more than the fare itself and launches himself from the car to Adam’s apartment building. Two stairs at a time, phone shoved into his pocket so he doesn’t automatically knock with his damaged hand, Nigel forces his breathing to slow as he brings his fingers to the door and raps his knuckles against it. A moment, two, and Nigel curls his hand in a fist and sets it silent against the door so as not to knock again, to be patient. To fucking wait.

The door opens several moments later, and Adam blinks up at Nigel where he stands, eyes just as wide, hair just as messy, expression momentarily perplexed before he smiles, wide, genuine, and glances back into his apartment.

“I found it,” he says again, proud like a child presenting something for school. “I found it where it should be, through some paths on a computer that didn’t connect before because they didn’t exist before. It wasn’t properly receipted in, it’s been there for a week.” He turns back, still smiling, but gentler now. “I said I’d find it. I promised I would.”

Adam’s eyes slip over Nigel in front of him, just the same, just as tall, as broad, as -

“Broken,” Adam frowns, looking at Nigel’s hand against the door frame. “Your hand is broken, how did you do that?”

“I missed you,” Nigel breathes, stepping closer and grasping his good hand back through Adam’s hair. “I fucking missed you, you know that?”

Squirming, Adam smiles - a little uneasy, more than a little pleased - turning his cheek against Nigel’s hand as it slips from his hair to his cheek. “I know that,” he answers. “I know that because you kept calling. A lot. Sometimes all in a row.”

“Fucking hell, Adam, you could have fucking answered.”

“I didn’t want to,” he shrugs, stumbling a little as Nigel snares him close with an arm around his shoulder. Nigel doesn’t ask why he didn’t want to - he fucking knows already. He knows it’s his fucking fault and he knows that Adam was busy and he knows that Adam’s hair smells like lavender shampoo when he buries his nose in it to breathe him in.

“I broke it on a door,” he grunts. “And then a wall.”

Adam hums, displeasure and a strange sort of recognition and resignation in Nigel just being this way. He sighs against his shoulder, but doesn't yet lift his hands to hold him back.

"Was that my fault?" He asks quietly, not realizing he had spoken those words before, when Nigel had come here bloody, with his hand injured then too, when he had come back with alcohol and cigarettes and the book he had borrowed and a box of condoms.

He asks because he doesn't like to see Nigel hurt. He doesn’t like to see anyone hurt. He asks because he doesn't want it to happen again. Because he wants to tell him that he can help him hold power and control, if not teach him to take it himself.

He asks because he missed him a lot.

“It was my temper,” Nigel answers, and it’s the truth. It wasn’t any more Adam’s fault than what caused their schism in the first place, no more his doing than the container going fucking missing. And it’s with that thought that Nigel laughs, rumbling low and smoke-rough, upon realizing for the whole fucking cab ride there, he hadn’t thought about the container once.

He had thought only about Adam, and holding him like this again.

So it doesn’t matter that Adam doesn’t hold him back yet. It doesn’t matter if he ever does, so long as he lets Nigel pull him tight like this and breathe him and feel him with gentle breath against his chest and warm hair against his cheek. He peppers the kid with little kisses, eyes closed, not bothering to ask if it’s okay because Nigel knows if he doesn’t fucking do this now - even if it’s another two fucking weeks, or twelve, or a thousand - then he’s going to lose his fucking mind.

“I missed you, gorgeous,” he says again, throat clicking when he swallows down another dire laugh. “Every fucking minute.”

Adam hums. He doesn't tell Nigel how his routine had mangled with Nigel gone, does not tell him how for a week he made them both breakfast. How for a week he reached out in bed and didn't find him there. How he had to dig out his old weighted blanket to be able to sleep at all.

He had missed him. He had missed the little things. Finding mugs all over his apartment. The lingering smell of cigarettes though Nigel had, all but one time, smoked outside. Rough stubble against his thighs, rough knuckles down his cheeks, rough fingers in his hair.

The swearing.

Adam brings his hands together around Nigel’s shoulders and sighs against him, letting his eyes close as Nigel mumbles a curse and kisses his hair again.

"The container is still packed, waiting for a pick up," Adam says. "The paperwork was filed wrong. The number changed two ports before, and because of this, I lost it. I couldn't track it, but I did, now, I did and I found it and it isn't missing anymore." Adam swallows and sighs. "And I'm not missing you anymore because you're here."

Nigel groans low at the words, the latter more even than the former. With abandon, he takes Adam from his feet, ignores the yelp of protest, and holds the kid against him, one arm beneath his ass and the other circling his waist. He could collapse from the relief of it, but instead just holds Adam suspended, toes dragging on the floor.

“You are a fucking angel, Adam,” he mutters into the kid’s shoulder. “Can we get to it?”

“To -”

“The container.”

“It’s in Safi.”

“Fucking Safi?”

“Morocco,” Adam clarifies, and Nigel squeezes him tighter. It doesn’t matter where it is, it could be on the fucking moon for all that, and Nigel’d still be able to get to it, knowing which fucking crater it wound up in. This means money. This means less need to hustle up new distributors who were counting on the shipment’s arrival - they’ll be fucking pissed but Nigel will give them a bigger cut and that’ll shut them up.

The thoughts of business vanish when Adam presses his fingers through the back of Nigel’s hair, and sighs against his tattooed skin.

“Are you alright?” Nigel asks, squeezing the kid tighter against himself, heart racing like he’s just taken a noseful when instead he has something far more intoxicating breathing over his neck. “Are you still angry at me, baby?”

Adam makes a little noise, keeps his fingers moving against Nigel gently as he considers his answer.

"I'm alright," he says, and it's true. He had slowly reworked his routine and he had managed alone, for a while. But there is something profoundly comforting about being held this way, something so profoundly good. He rubs his face softly against Nigel again. "I'm not angry."

He is hoisted higher up and before Adam can say another word, lips press to his, familiar and hot and demanding and he succumbs to it, eyes closed and legs wrapped around Nigel’s waist. He wonders if it will be like this, now, the ups and downs of a sine wave, kissing and sex and comfort, blood and broken hands and angry words and killing. Over and over, a cycle he can't stop. He supposes it will be, Nigel isn't a tame creature, he would lose his mind without his violence.

"Will you listen?" Adam asks, catching his fingers against a stubbled cheek as they break to breathe and Nigel kicks the door shut and walks them deeper into the apartment.

"To anything you fucking like, darling,"

"Will you listen when I teach you about the computers? The buttons and the threats you can make without breaking your hand?"

Nigel growls softly, bites against Adam’s neck as Adam squirms, rubbing down against him. 

"You can break your hand if you really want to -" Adam bites his lip, draws his hands further down Nigel’s back as the sloppy hot kisses continue against his skin, sending shivers through him over and over. "But only if you really want the adrenaline surge from hurting someone. The control will be somewhere else. You will be able to fall back to it if hurting someone isn't enough - Nigel!" It's breathless, just how he wants the kid as he lays him back in bed and crawls over him.

Adam scrambles up against the pillows and smiles, directing his eyes to the ceiling, up higher and back to the wall above the headboard as he swallows.

"Your toothbrush is still here," he murmurs. “Your alcohol and the books I lent you and the condoms."

“I took one with me,” Nigel grins.

“A condom?”

“A book, Adam, fuck,” he sighs. He grips Adam behind the knee with his good hand and pulls him back down to lay flat on the bed, dropping heavily on top of him and rubbing kisses against his chest. His injured hand rests beside, but the one that still works - for fucking now, anyway - crawls beneath Adam’s shirt to feel the softness of his skin and the warmth of his body.

“Did you read it?”

“Yes, I fucking read it, darling, of course I did,” he snorts, but his eyes are narrowed in pleasure as he touches a kiss to the center of Adam’s chest and watches him. “Because you told me I should.”

"Did you like it?" Adam ducks his head to watch Nigel properly, as contented to continue the conversation as he is to feel Nigel’s lips against his chest properly. He works fingers carefully over the buttons to undo his shirt, wriggling free of it and pulling his undershirt off as well.

"I liked it." Nigel’s voice is pitched enough that Adam knows he is only half - if that - in the conversation at all, and he finds it doesn't matter. He can drill him on the book later, tell him about others, ask about what he had done these two weeks he had not been here.

Adam draws his knees up, presses closer to the man between them, and tugs gently to pull his ratty tank top off him to toss to the floor as well.

Nigel catches Adam’s hand on the return and presses the kid’s palm to his chest. Clever fingers curl against the hair there, over scars and skin alike, and Nigel quiets the likely torrent of questions with a rough kiss, tangling a grip in Adam’s hair.

He doesn’t anticipate the arguments are over any more than Adam’s questions about the books or his insistence on learning how to use a fucking computer. He’ll try. He’ll try to keep the necessary violence away from this kid, escort idiots from the room when they want to fucking flap their gums, and keep his sundry weaponry out of sight. He’ll try to use the godforsaken computer even though he already resents the fucking things more than he can possibly put into words beyond _fucking bullshit_.

He thinks for a moment that he’ll try to swear less, but he knows that’s a load of shit and just grins against Adam’s throat instead.

“What do you want, darling?” He purrs. “Anything. Name it and it’s fucking yours, angel.”

Adam considers, as he shivers beneath the warm breath and tickling lips. There is a lot he wants, and he could start to list and know Nigel would find a way to make him stop. His cheeks darken thinking of the way he would gently interrupt him without saying a word, just by putting his lips around him and sucking. He wants that, certainly. He wants to feel Nigel rub against him, hand between his legs, cock against his thigh.

He wants to lose himself to the pleasure sex between them brings.

"I want you to stay, after," he says, finally. "We can talk or not talk or find the information on the container some more or have sex again, but I just want you to stay."

Nigel pretends to consider the request. He pretends like it doesn’t take only an instant to decide that _yes of course I’ll fucking stay_ and he hums, teasing, against Adam’s throat, rocking down against him.

“Can I smoke inside?”

“No,” Adam blinks.

Nigel laughs, low and pleased, and draws his lips over the curve of Adam’s jaw to brush against his mouth. “I’ll stay,” he murmurs, kissing the kid deeply enough that Adam arches from the bed beneath him, bare chests pressed together. Nigel runs his hand down Adam’s chest, grazing over a nipple with his thumb, and leans back to watch his cheeks bloom with color. “Whatever you want, gorgeous, anything. You can talk my ear off all fucking night about the computer if you want, or fucking space, anything. But I’m going to kiss you while you do. And I’m not taking my hands off you for at least the next goddamn week.”

Adam’s smile is bright, cheeks flushed and eyes wide. “That’s okay.” He makes another sound as Nigel rubs his hand over his chest, his stomach, down to stroke over Adam’s pants. “I wasn’t going to go anywhere this week.”

“Fucking right you’re not.” Another kiss, another deliberate rub before Nigel starts to work Adam’s pants open, sliding his hand in to touch him properly, to feel him harden in his palm from this alone. Always so responsive, this kid, always so entirely aware of everything and allowing it all in. He gasps, bites his lip and pushes up into Nigel’s hand, brings his own to tug Nigel’s hair, pull him lower to kiss his chest again. 

Adam feels beautifully overwhelmed, always made this way by Nigel in his extremes of adoration or anger; he doesn’t know what to do beyond lie back and enjoy it, beyond touch as much as he can, coax and pull and make his need known without words.

He wants Nigel’s mouth. He wants him to touch and taste and press into him with slick fingers to stretch him. He tells him, in broken little words as his breathing hitches, as he smiles and presses a hand to his face to try and hide it.

Nigel reaches, removing Adam's hand from across his lovely mouth. He brings it to his own instead, kissing his palm, his fingers, and drawing one into his mouth for a long suck. His eyes hood but he doesn't let them close, watching Adam's lips part on a soft little sound, as red as his cheeks.

"Ask me again," Nigel murmurs. "I want to hear you ask for it, darling."

Adam wets his lips and sighs. His words are never right, especially for things like this, but Nigel has told him he likes to hear it anyway.

"Tell me what you want to feel," Nigel clarifies, before mouthing lower over Adam's twitching belly, tongue pressing flat to feel him shiver.

Adam draws another breath and just makes little sounds, those he knows Nigel enjoys, those knows he remembers and aims to get Adam to make again. He doesn’t want to use his words, he can’t turn them like Nigel does. He groans, just softly, when the older man just watches him, waiting, teasing with holding this back until Adam asks him.

“I want to feel your hands on my legs, bending them and shifting them apart. You always kiss the side of my knee when you do and it makes me shiver, I like it.” Adam watches as Nigel sits up to acquiesce, biting his lip when he sucks a kiss against his leg that Adam knows will be a light bruise in the morning that he can touch and remember.

“Can you kiss lower?” He asks, tilting his head up to watch as Nigel does, against the soft warm skin of his thigh. Adam swallows, curls his toes and relaxes them. “Lower?”

“Anything,” Nigel swears again, and without a pause, he hitches Adam’s leg up over his shoulder and presses his broken hand against his belly, dipping between his thighs and spreading him open with a long, slow lick. He avoids Adam’s cock intentionally, grinning when the kid whimpers, and watching it raise, twitching from his belly when Nigel sucks against his opening.

He’s fucking gorgeous. Nigel says it a lot but he means it every fucking time. Gorgeous and persistent and brilliant and fucking stubborn. In a word, he’s fucking perfect, and he feels just as lovely as he sounds when Nigel draws a long kiss, open-mouthed, over his hole.

He works him open with his tongue, pressing it deep against the resistance that tightens at first and then yields. Wetting his fingers quickly between his lips, they join Nigel’s tongue as he flicks it over soft, wrinkled skin, watching the kid writhe and gasp breathless above him. He spreads his fingers, dragging his tongue between them, and curses low when Adam’s voice cracks on a moan.

This Adam hopes Nigel never makes him ask for in words. He doesn’t know what words he could even use to describe how this feels. His entire body goes weak, his mind goes white and everything he usually has such good control over flies free and wild, his hands too clumsy to catch and bring it all back.

He drops his head back further, bares his neck and shivers, pushing down against Nigel’s fingers, against his talented and unrelenting tongue. Adam tugs his own hair and bites his lip, stretching himself and pulling his muscles taut just to feel Nigel slide his hands over his chest, his stomach, teasing close to his cock without ever touching it until Adam makes another helpless little noise.

“Nigel -”

They had fallen into this quickly, sex, and touching and teasing and play, and Adam has missed it a lot for the time he has kept Nigel at bay to sort his own thoughts and adjust his patterns. He has missed how good it feels, he has missed how good it feels with Nigel specifically, his rough words and rough hands and rough everything, and him being so gentle Adam wants to sob for it.

“That - there - Nigel… it feels good, feels so good -”

Nigel’s cock throbs at the words, agonizingly hard inside his jeans, and the weak thrusts of his hips do little to ease the pressure. He does, in fact, wish now that he hadn’t broken his fucking hand. Fuck, while he’s making pointless fucking wishes, he wishes he had a dozen fucking hands so he could rub Adam’s belly, and finger him, and stroke his cock, and pinch his nipples, and touch his own cock all at the same time.

“Fuck,” he breathes against Adam’s thigh. His lips curve over the tendon stretched tight there, his teeth press against it - he sucks until Adam squirms somewhere between pleasure and discomfort and he’s sure he’s left a mark there. Adam is his, entirely, his and no one else’s - and he wants Adam to remember it as much as anyone else.

“Baby,” Nigel pleads, lifting his head enough to breathe, and sighing hot against Adam’s cock. It twitches upward towards him and he grins, dragging slow kisses along it. “Let me fuck you? Please, I’m fucking dying for it, darling.”

Adam makes another of those plaintive little noises and nods, swallowing thick and whimpering for it, hands down to grasp the sheets or dig against Nigel’s hair where he presses to him. One of the few times he does not cringe at Nigel’s choice of words is when he is barely coherent beneath him. He finds that here, he loves the words, they touch something in him and curl it, pulling his entire body hotter and colder all at once.

“Please,” he sighs, fumbling for Nigel until he obliges him, crawls closer to kiss and lets Adam curl all his limbs around him and hold on, rocking up in deliberate seeking little rolls for friction. “Please, I want you to fuck me,” Adam grins, kissing Nigel before he can properly respond to it.

The groan, almost a growl, is caught between their mouths as Nigel plunges harder into the kiss to taste that word from Adam’s lips. Delight flutters fast in him and breaks into a laugh when they part, foreheads pressed together as Nigel knocks several books from the nightstand in seeking the drawer and a condom from it.

He tears the packet with his teeth and swears a blue streak fumbling it on with one hand, not wanting to be apart from Adam enough to watch what he’s doing. Not wanting to be apart from Adam at-fucking-all, for as long as he can convince Adam to put up with him. He’s not going to leave after this. He doubts he’d do so even if Adam insisted on it.

He wants this, more than the thrill of violence, more than money, more than the fucking container.

He wants Adam.

Only Adam.

Spreading his legs wide, knees up, Adam watches just past Nigel as the older man tries to hold his fleeting gaze, a moment snared and lost when instead Adam’s eyes roll closed and Nigel presses slowly into him.

The stretch draws groans from them both, Adam’s lips parting on sweet little noises as Nigel pushes in, nose buried in the kid’s hair, whispering adoration and filth in equal measure to feel Adam shiver with it, bend and coil and shudder with it.

He is so good, so, so fucking good.

Adam curls his arms up around Nigel’s shoulders and holds him close, shifting one leg to hook up over Nigel’s hip as the other presses toes into the sheets. Nigel moves as soon as he’s pressed fully in, to Adam’s delight and pleasure, drawing a shaking little laugh from him as he lives up to Adam’s request of him.

Adam squirms, drags nails over Nigel’s back to watch him arch, to draw those dark eyes endlessly back to him, to pull foreign words from him to paint against his chest. Adam doesn’t try to paint his own words against him - he uses sounds instead, tilts his voice and makes it carry, pushes breathy little moans against Nigel when he finds his prostate and thrusts against it.

He feels good. He can feel the way everything he does affects the man above him, just as everything Nigel does to him affects him. It is such an organic cycle, such a good sensation that Adam doesn’t ever want it to stop.

Nigel props himself onto an elbow, dropping endless kisses against Adam’s mouth as he moans against the older man. The uninjured hand drops between them to take Adam’s length and squeeze, groaning when Adam clenches even tighter - somehow _hotter_ \- around him in response. He doesn’t have to stroke fast, he can feel already how Adam is trembling from all of this - beautifully overwhelmed to a whole different sort of breathlessness than the last time they saw each other.

He has always been a selfish lover, mostly because he always insisted on paying someone for the pleasure rather than dealing with anyone longer than it took to fuck them and get them out again. But with this kid, Nigel wants to make Adam feel good even more than himself. He wants to wear him out so his thoughts don’t run rampant over him, he wants to see him tired and flushed and nuzzling like a kitten against Nigel’s chest when they’re done.

He wants all of him, the words and thoughts, fits and habits, the sex and the snuggling after.

“Fucking Adam,” Nigel groans against him, slowing his thrusts to rub the head of his cock across Adam’s prostate again and again until he feels those sleek fingers shake against his skin. “You’re a fucking angel, darling, you’re fucking perfect - I could fucking live inside you.”

Adam arches, eyes wide and lips parted, and he doesn’t want to correct him that it’s impossible to live inside someone else, he doesn’t want to tell him that isn’t not realistic - right then he doesn’t care. Right then he wants nothing more than to cling to Nigel as he touches him like this, to coil and arch and wriggle in his arms.

“Feels good,” he sighs, licks his lips, tenses, relaxes, shivers and draws his hands through Nigel’s hair again, tugging it, pulling until the man tilts his head back and Adam can nuzzle beneath his jaw. So close, now, so close to release and just whimpering it against Nigel’s throat, over his dark tattoo.

He cums first, between them and into Nigel’s hand as the older man curses, calls Adam beautiful and perfect and any number of sweet things under the sun, bad words mingling with good and the juxtaposition makes Adam grin, sleepy-eyed and pliant.

“Move faster,” Adam tells him, hooking his legs up over Nigel’s. “I won’t break, and you like it.”

Nigel grabs the headboard, smearing cum across it, and hunched over the younger man, drives hard into him. Just once, watching his expression, seeing only a bare tension between his brows before Adam moans against Nigel’s chest and the brief blissful pain gives way to pleasure again. And again, and again, as Nigel takes him roughly, sinking his cock into Adam from tip to hilt, until the bed is squeaking and jutting against the wall.

The neighbors are going to hate Nigel.

But when Adam wraps thin arms around his middle and breathes trembling against his chest, Nigel could not fucking care less. Nor when a few more sharp thrusts tip him over with a shuddering curse and he stills, buried deep, pulsing release with such relief that it dizzies the man and sets off sparks behind his eyes.

He savors the slickness hot against his cock, working slower into Adam but no less deep, sensitive to every movement of muscle that holds his cock so far inside, to the heat of Adam’s body around his own. He stays there until he starts to soften, slowly, and slips free to shove his arm beneath Adam’s back and pull him against his chest, kissing him through the settling of his heart and his quieting breath.

Adam kisses back, languid lazy things, and makes a small sound when Nigel pulls him closer. They’re sweaty, slicked together in mess and Adam wants to get up and take a shower, but he finds mild groaned resistance when he tries to slip free. So he just settles, nose against Nigel’s neck and arms around beneath him, holding him close as he starts to doze.

“You can smoke inside when it’s winter,” Adam tells him, mumbled words barely coherent. “When it’s snowing and very cold. I don’t like the snow. I don’t want you to suffer in it. But every other time smoke outside, please.”

Nigel runs his hand along Adam’s back, up and down, up and down, and squints a smile against his hair. “If you say so, darling.”

“I do,” Adam affirms, and Nigel sits back cross-legged, dragging Adam into his lap.

“Then that’s how it’ll be.”

Winter is many months away, and Nigel wonders for a moment if Adam realizes what he’s asking. He tilts his cheek against the kid’s hair, and sighs long against his ear. Of course he realizes. He’s Adam fucking Raki, and he never says things that he doesn’t mean. Even if it means putting up with smoke. With cursing. With bouts of anger and impatience.

He’s Adam fucking Raki, and whatever he wants, he gets.

Anything.


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nigel watches him in quiet wonderment, gaze caressing still-ruddy cheeks and a sweet, crooked smile and big blue eyes. He wants to lay alongside him, pull him back against his chest and press inside slowly, again and again for as long as he can stand. He wants to stay here, rather than go to fucking Norway, but there’s an unfamiliar tug in his chest at the thought that - as he has for nearly a year now - he’ll come back to this when he’s done: 
> 
> Home. 
> 
> _Glimpses into life with the Spacedogs after the Midnighters saga..._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A [commission](http://wwhiskeyandbloodd.tumblr.com/donate) for the extraordinary [Jennifer](http://ponfarrtingspock.tumblr.com/), who we love with absolute abandon. Thank you for giving us a chance to properly wrap things up with these two!

_Wednesday._

“Adam, now's really not the fucking time -”

“It is the perfect time. You're a man who works well, better, under pressure. Say you’re sorry.”

“We can do this at home, alright? Just fucking - Adam. Adam, what the fuck. What the fuck is it doing?”

“I’ve reversed our transfer.”

“Reversed -”

“The money is going back to the original account dollar by dollar and it works very quickly. Once the last one is gone, that money is gone, Nigel, all of it.”

“All of - fucking - Adam,” seethes Nigel, stepping closer to the kid, stepping away again, and lifting his hands. Dark eyes dart between Adam’s placid blue gaze and the flickering screen, its loading bar ticking ever higher. “Adam, it’s a hundred thousand dollars.”

Adam glances to the screen. “Eighty, now.”

“Adam!”

“Seventy-five.”

Nigel’s hands clench to fists, and for a moment he stands absolutely still, his words no more than a thin hiss of breath. “Fucking fix it, Adam.”

“Not until you -”

Adam’s words are broken by the splintering of glass, bottle shattering against the wall where Nigel hurls it. Amber liquid paints a firework burst over the wall and drips like embers down to the floor. Adam only brings a hand to his face and gently chews against the side of his thumbnail, turning to look at the screen again. “Fifty.”

“Adam -”

“Forty.”

“You’re a little shit.”

“We will run out of thousands soon and hit the hundreds, and hundreds will take less time to vanish than the thousands did.”

“Fuck.” A pause, dark eyes on the bar ticking away their hard-stolen money. His jaw sets, teeth gently grinding together, and Nigel takes a breath. “Adam, I’m sorry.”

The younger man continues to watch the screen, numbers slipping smaller and smaller, bar inching higher and higher.

“Darling, I’m sorry. I am.” The desperate tone has dissipated, quieting and softening when Adam still doesn’t turn around. “I’m sorry I didn’t listen.”

Adam swallows, thousands slipping to hundreds and he lets it tick down, down, lower still, to nothing. Full bar and silence. Then he turns to Nigel, smile small and eyes away, almost demure, almost shy.

“I forgive you.”

Nigel’s jaw works a moment more, trying so fucking hard, not to ask but - “And you still let the money go.”

“That wasn’t our money,” Adam shrugs, reaching for a small thumb drive attached to the side of the computer. “Money can’t be returned dollar by dollar, Nigel, that would be ridiculous, it would waste so much time. Transfers are instant, from one account to the other. I was backing our data up before you smash the computer as well, since the job is finished.”

Bright eyes to dark again, smile a little wider, and Nigel wonders when he will learn that damned lesson on power the kid keeps pushing on him. Probably fucking never.

Doesn’t stop him hurtling another bottle into the wall as Adam moves past him towards the door. He keeps a foot in it to hold it open as he leans in the doorframe and lets Nigel destroy the blameless notebook against any flat surface he can find.

_Saturday._

“Nigel. Are you awake?”

A grunt.

“Are you snoring or are you awake?”

“I’m awake now, darling,” snarls Nigel from beneath the covers where he’s entombed himself, beneath even Adam’s weighted blanket in hopes that it will all somehow prevent the sun from getting anywhere fucking near his eyes.

“There’s a problem.”

“There’s always a fucking problem. What with?”

Adam sighs. “There’s a problem with the milk.”

“No fucking way it’s gone sour,” Nigel mutters, peeking from beneath the blanket and grimacing as the room spins when he tries to focus through dry eyes and vertigo vision. “I bought it fucking yesterday, if it’s sour I’m going to beat the shopkeeper’s fucking face -”

“It isn’t sour, Nigel, it’s just the wrong milk.”

“How the fuck can milk be wrong?”

“It isn’t what I drink,” Adam replies, standing over him still, skinny legs in those fetching little Y-fronts and nothing else for the moment. “It’s the wrong milk, I can’t put it on my cereal.”

“Milk’s milk, darling, fuck,” he yawns, trying to curl back under the blanket again, and Adam makes _that sound_ , that complaining little displeased thing that puppies make when they can’t reach the furniture yet. Nigel sighs, defeated. “It came from a cow, right?”

“Yes.”

“Then it’s fucking milk, Adam, Christ.”

“You’re,” sighs Adam. “You’re forgetting that other animals make milk, too, it doesn’t have to be -”

“Adam,” growls Nigel, drawing his name long.

“Nevermind, that isn’t what’s wrong. It is from a cow but -”

“Tell me what’s the fucking matter, baby."

“I like two-percent,” Adam explains, and Nigel can hear the pout in his tone, the tension in his brows, that ridiculous, fucking adorable look he will wear - Nigel knows - when he turns to Adam and looks. “This isn’t two-percent.”

“What the fuck is it?”

“It’s whole.”

Nigel grinds his palm against his eye and jerks the blankets down from around him, squinting his eyes shut against the blinding light that fills the room. “I’m going to be fucking sick.”

“Not in bed, please - the bathroom is very close,” Adam insists, his forehead furrowed as he steps closer on bare feet and holds the plastic half-gallon jug out towards Nigel, who makes no move to take it. “You see? Whole milk.”

“So that’s better then, isn’t it, darling?”

“Better?”

“Yes, angel, yes, this fucking milk is better -”

“It’s wrong.”

“It’s fucking _more_ ,” groans Nigel, sweeping a hand across the dresser beside the bed to find his cigarettes. “It’s ninety-fucking-eight percent more milk, Adam, so you get all the fucking milk. Not just two fucking percent, you get the _whole_ fucking milk with this. Isn’t that better?”

“More isn’t always better,” Adam mumbles, and Nigel snorts, pressing his fingers to his eyelids over and over, seeing stars and wondering if he’s magically seeing the constellations that Adam has told him about so many times that he feels as though they’re sewn into the backs of his eyes.

Another sigh and Nigel peels one eyelid open to see if he’s anywhere near his damn cigarettes, only to find that he isn’t simply because Adam is holding them in his hand - not out of reach deliberately, but held out in a small gesture as a child would a new toy, still unsure how the offering will be taken but wanting to give it anyway. Nigel closes his eyes again and turns his palm for them, feeling small fingers brush it as Adam passes them over.

“It will give you stronger bones, kid. You’re fragile as a fucking sparrow right now.”

“I’m not fragile.”

“Bones will break in a light wind with you.”

“I have never broken a bone.”

“It’ll happen,” Nigel insists, waiting for Adam to hum his displeasure and disagreement, before grasping him by the wrist and yanking him into bed, wrong milk and all. Thank fuck the kid is fastidious about keeping bottles closed unless he’s actively pouring from one. “It’ll happen and when it does, you will have two percent fucking strength in them, not whole, and that’s fucked up.”

“That’s also wrong,” Adam points out, but Nigel can hear the smile there where the pout had lowered his tone before.

Nigel spreads his hands up Adam’s arms as he turns the kid to his back, rubbing up to his wrists and back down and ignoring the plastic jug that settles beside them in the bed with a sloshing sound. He still has his cigarettes in hand, and with particularly impressive dexterity for being so fucking hungover that the room is still swimming, Nigel works one free with one hand, dropping the pack aside once he’s freed his lighter from it as well.

Soft kisses drift down Adam’s throat as the older man keeps his arms held above his head, until Nigel reaches the slim ridge of his collarbone. He sets the cigarette between his lips and lights it before pitching the lighter to the floor with a clatter, and sighing smoke over Adam’s throat.

“I think you should drink it,” Nigel decides, receiving a soft sigh as Adam rolls his eyes to the ceiling.

“I don’t drink it, Nigel.”

“The fuck do you do with it?”

“It’s for the cereal.”

“And then you - fucking pour it out? What?”

“Yes,” answers Adam, and Nigel blinks at him, caught somewhere between being entirely fucking baffled and entirely fucking charmed.

“So you need only two percent of your milk, so that you can pour it on your cereal, and then throw it away. That’s why you’re sending me out puking fucking sick to the corner store to fucking get milk. I’m going, obviously I’m fucking going darling, I just want to make sure I understand.”

“I don’t like the taste of milk,” Adam replies, as simply as he replies to anything, in truth, always factual, always hard to argue with because, truly, why would you, when it’s phrased as it is? “But I like cereal. I can’t taste the milk with the cereal very much, and it works for me. Whole milk will be too strong and I will taste it.”

“You’re a fucking wonder.”

“And you’re smoking in bed and it isn’t winter.” Adam points out, though he makes no effort to stop him smoking. He shivers when another exhale tickles his skin as Nigel hums.

“It’s winter.”

“It’s sunny.”

“It can be sunny in fucking winter.”

“It’s April, Nigel.”

So Nigel just kisses him, chaste and pressing, and buries his face against Adam’s neck, careful to hold the cigarette away so as not to burn either of them.

“Then I suppose I better fucking take it outside.”

“And get some milk, please.”

Another snort, another kiss to sensitive skin, and Nigel pushes himself to sit up. “Yes, darling, I’ll get your fucking milk.”

 _Friday_.

“No, I don’t want to talk to you. I fucking don’t, I’m fucking tired. I know it’s fucking breakfast for you, you’re enjoying your fucking coffee and fucking fish, whatever the fuck you people eat, but it’s fucking late here, do you understand that? Do you understand the world doesn’t fucking revolve - ”

Nigel swallows hard, and rests his head against the back of his chair, pinching the crooked, scarred bridge of his nose between his fingers.

“Yes, I’ll fucking wait, put him on.”

It’s been an endless back and forth, for - Nigel checks - nearly an hour. Passed from one idiot to the next, to a man who didn’t speak a lick of English but spoke very impassioned Norwegian, and now he’s on hold again. Nigel wonders if his own business ever seemed this fucking shabby and he knows - grudgingly - that it must have.

Before Adam fucking Raki, anyway. The kid’s been good enough that Nigel’s been able to cut loose almost all the fucking lackeys and useless sacks of shit that he needed before as human shields. In fact, together, they’ve been able to cut loose almost all the ground work entirely, barring high-end meetings directly with producers who have sought them out as exclusive wholesalers.

They hardly get their hands dirty at all. Adam works on distribution, making sure the cargo gets where it needs to fucking go so that the retailers in countless cities have product on hand, and Nigel - Nigel takes the meetings. Nigel sniffs the stuff to make sure it’s good. Nigel takes the flights to check in on operations directly and break knees that need breaking. And Nigel is the one on the phone, still, at three in the fucking morning arguing with Norwegians about the difference between this fucking port and that and he swears he’ll fucking kill the next person who picks up the phone that isn’t -

“Adam?” He calls over his shoulder, spinning in the kid’s computer chair to seek him out. “I’m nearly done, darling, I hope you’re already in bed.”

A small sound from the other room and Nigel turns back, hand up to his eyes to rub them as he waits, still fucking _waits_ for someone to get on the fucking phone. Is this deal is even worth it, truly, for the sleepless nights and the go 'round? He's fucking dizzy with it.

Another small sound, sleepy and little, and Nigel drops his head back against the chair, turning it back and forth with the toe of one foot. He thinks of what he would rather be doing, and how he'd rather be waiting for an answer as his hands seek over scarless skin and pale curves of muscles beneath it. Adam is utterly beguiling when he’s sleepy. If Nigel wakes him too early, or wants him when he’s not fully awake he’s like a doll, pliant and floppy, lazy smiles and unrestrained voice.

Nigel licks his lips. They could be that way right now. He's draw that voice from Adam, the breathy little whimpers, the occasional plea, all for him.

Nigel wonders if he’s dozed off when he feels thin fingers in his hair, relaxed with sleep. Maybe he’s just managed to let his mind take over enough to no longer care, no longer be here, but fall into his fantasy instead. He folds his fingers over the receiver, holding it to his ear still in case someone fucking picks up the phone, for a change.

“Just wait, darling, I’m nearly done.”

“You’ve been on the phone for a long time,” Adam replies, soft cheek pressing to Nigel’s stubbled one before that contact pulls away. Adam comes to stand before the man instead, in truth barely awake, as Nigel had imagined. He's in just his briefs and nothing else, rubbing the back of his hand against his eye with a sleepy smile. “So I came to you instead.”

Nigel doesn’t resist. He couldn’t, even if he bothered to, and there’s no fucking reason to bother with Adam so drowsy and sweet before him. A big hand frames one pointed hip to bring the kid closer, and shifting the phone away from his mouth, Nigel shuts his eyes and kisses open warmth against Adam’s soft stomach. Smooth skin, tickled by his stubble, tenses beneath his mouth and Nigel turns his cheek against it to rest. The phone hums in one ear, and Adam’s stomach rumbles against the other. Adam’s fingers stroke through Nigel’s hair, sweeping slack strands back from his face, and Nigel nuzzles again.

“Little sparrows should be sleeping.”

A new name added to the plentiful list already - _darling, gorgeous, baby, angel, fucking Adam fucking Raki_ \- but fitting, spoken in adoration of the kid’s birdlike bones and quick mind. Nigel lifts his eyes upward, and leans back as Adam sinks into his lap, bare legs spread over his thighs.

“You should be asleep too,” Adam points out. “When you’re not, I have trouble sleeping.”

It’s sweet. Matter-of-fact, but sweet. Nigel curls a hand against Adam’s face and brings him down, accepting the sleepy little kisses that Adam offers him. A curt voice breaks through the phone, and Nigel speaks in a growl.

“I swear to fucking Christ, I’m going to hang up, and make sure you and the rest of the fucking country never see another fucking -”

The phone clicks to hold again, and Nigel’s fingers clench in that way that bottles and laptops fear.

“Can we write them off?” He asks Adam, plaintive. “I don’t want to go to fucking Norway to fucking sort this out. They’re fucking running around there like fucking chickens with their fucking heads cut off and - maybe I should fucking go. Maybe I should fucking go and make sure that’s exactly what ha- hello. Yes. We’ve got two fucking crates that will be on the ground in two days and I’m losing fucking faith, Olaf, I’m losing fucking faith that you’ll be able to even put your fucking pants on to go get them -”

Whatever is said on the other end is both threatening and pleading, if somehow it were possible, and Nigel’s eyes raise to the ceiling as he lets out a long, far from patient breath. Against him, Adam just hums and ducks his head to rub against Nigel’s chest over and over like a cat, smiling when a heavy hand rests in his hair and curls against his scalp.

He doesn't listen to the threats made on the phone. He could actually recite them, or close enough to them, since Nigel moves all the "fucks" around by seemingly intuitive improvisation. It's a bit like jazz, Adam thinks absently, as his lips seek out skin beneath the warm hair of Nigel’s chest, find a nipple and press to it, the riffs entirely made up but the melody the same, always recognizable, always -

"- fucking useless, I should just hang up the fucking phone. What? Fucking what? A fucking threat? Yeah it fucking is, Olaf, it fucking is. If I hang up the fucking phone you don’t know where the fucking crates will be, or how to fucking open them without -"

On and on, so Adam just bites down gently against the little nub and lightly pulls until Nigel’s breath hitches and the barrage of cursing subsides. Nigel makes a sound that to the man on the phone sounds considering, but Adam knows is meant entirely for him. His fingers tighten when Adam’s lips sweep over Nigel’s skin and suck, and Nigel sinks his teeth into his bottom lip to stop the sound that Adam nearly pulls from him.

His hips rise, outside of his control, cock pressing hard against the join of Adam’s thigh. Slow strokes rock them together, and even when Nigel squirms away from the kid’s lips and seeking fingers, nipples peaked to almost uncomfortable sensitivity, he can’t escape and simply huffs a laugh.

It is heard, of course, and Nigel snorts. “So what if I fucking am laughing? How could I fucking not laugh at a fucking shitshow like? Clowns are for fucking laughing at, Olaf, but it’s going to be a lot less fucking funny when I get there - yeah, I am. Yeah. Fucking tomorrow, the fuck does it matter?”

It matters to Adam who hates Nigel leaving, so he continues to mouth against him, over chest and throat, rubbing his hips warmly, deliberately against Nigel’s. The chair beneath them squeaks, not used to so much weight to carry, or the rocking when it is meant to only spin. Adam sets his knees a little wider and kisses against Nigel’s cheek and he slips a hand between them to rub Nigel through his underwear.

The only times Nigel ever gets rough with Adam is when he is so sexually forward. It's impossible not to, it is so spectacularly hot, seeing Adam take even that much control when he is usually so contented to give it up. And so he watches, fingers folded over the receiver again as some asshole grovels in his ear and before him Adam continues to stroke Nigel up with practiced and deliberate skill.

Blue eyes lift to meet Nigel’s and he leans in to press cheek to cheek as Nigel’s hand slips from messy curls to cupping his ass.

"My fingers never get as deep as yours do, when I have to touch myself," Adam murmurs.

“What did you say?” Nigel laughs, jaw slack. The man on the phone repeats himself and Nigel ignores him, eyes drifting closed when Adam, too, repeats himself, each breath against his ear pulling a shiver through the older man. “You do that?”

Blinking, surprised by Nigel’s surprise, Adam nods. “When you’re gone and I miss you.”

“Fucking Christ,” sighs Nigel, squeezing hard to shove Adam’s groin down against his own rutting hips. He rests his head back and shudders when Adam touches another kiss to his throat, swallowing hard. Cradling the phone between his cheek and his shoulder, Nigel slips his fingers between his lips, eyes black with pupil, wetting the fore and middle and bringing them back behind Adam to circle his opening. The other hand spreads the kid wide, stretching out the sleek briefs that cling to silky soft skin, and Nigel watches ravenous as his little sparrow blushes bright at the touch.

Adam ducks his gaze only when Nigel pushes a finger in, always - still - embarrassed to let him see, fully, what he does. He rocks back and Nigel curses again, eyes wide and jaw working, trying to hold the fucking phone and listen to a fucking idiot as Adam starts to fuck himself back against his hand.

The rest is white fucking noise really.

Adam presses his pink cheeks, his little sounds, against Nigel’s chest, against his neck, wriggling against him as Nigel turns his finger to work deeper in. The chair creaks beneath them and for once Adam doesn’t care. He doesn’t have space in his mind to care, when it has finally been slowed down by the feeling of Nigel’s hand against him, in him.

"Like that.” His voice hitches, lips parting on quiet little whines as Nigel works the second in alongside. Adam’s arms coil up over Nigel’s shoulders and he holds on, tense and trembling and flushed bright, still working back against the fingers that open him up.

Nigel’s throat jerks again, fingers spreading enough that Adam gasps against his shoulder. “God you’re fucking beautiful,” Nigel purrs, before snarling. “Not fucking you, Olaf, and you’ll be far fucking from it by the time I’m through with you.”

Adam is heat and pressure, rhythm and pulse, rocking and writhing against every push and pull of Nigel’s fingers inside of him. His body yields to this, to Nigel, unfurling like a fucking flower as he curves back in pleasure, spine bending beautifully before he bows his head between his arms, hands clenched behind Nigel’s neck. Curling his fingers, Nigel fills him, widens and stretches him, finds that familiar smooth little nub inside and rubs firm circles over it.

His voice breaks, and Adam can do no more than whimper, breathless, as Nigel fingers him, holding him almost painfully wide to press as deep as he can inside this kid that he adores beyond all fucking reason. He can’t stand it anymore, and lips curling over his teeth, hisses, “I’m coming. Yes, to fucking Norway. Tomorrow, the next day, whenever the fucking flight gets there. You have ample fucking time to think about how un-fucking-happy I am that I have to come oversee this myself to make sure you don’t fuck it up. No. No. Fuck you, Olaf.”

The receiver clatters to the ground and Nigel stretches with his free hand to hit the hook and drop the call. “Motherfuck, Adam, fucking Christ,” Nigel rattles, dropping back into his chair to finger him harder, faster, expression dark and delighted.

Adam can manage only sounds, now, little helpless things that shiver through his body as he pushes back harder against Nigel, rocks into him and turns his hips, seeking friction and mercy all at once. His cock is outlined by the front of his briefs, fabric pulled tight, a small patch darker by the tip as Adam’s cock leaks clear precum with every rubbing push into him.

Little hands scrabble over Nigel’s chest, his back, leave little nail marks of pink and pale in his desperation for something more. Deeper or wider or harder, he doesn’t know yet.

"I really like it when you - ah - touch... touch like that. I like your hands -" Adam brings his own down to stroke himself, deliberate slow rubs through fabric that pull moans from him and against Nigel’s throat.

“I know you do, darling,” rumbles Nigel in response, gaze darting downward to watch Adam’s eager palming between his legs, cock tenting stiff against his little underpants. He watches the kid’s stomach clench and release, glimmers of muscle under pale skin - he watches the way his hipbones press forward sharp and then relax with every rocking motion of need and want that renders them both breathless.

He pushes his fingers deep, up to battle-scarred knuckles, and runs his other hand up the curve of Adam’s ass, over the dip at the small of his back, higher between his shoulders. Bringing Adam’s chest to his mouth, Nigel finds a dark nipple and spreads his tongue over it, sucking the little nub between his lips to feel Adam’s moan shake his lithe little frame. He leaves it slick with spit, cooling in the late night early morning air, and sighs beneath Adam’s jaw.

“You touch yourself when I’m not here?” He coaxes, heart hammering at the thought of Adam spread wanton over tangled sheets, laid across his belly with one leg drawn up beside him and fingers curled against his mouth and inside himself, cheeks pink. “Fucking yourself with your own fingers when mine aren’t there, angel? Lovely little sparrow,” he groans, digging his cock up against Adam’s trembling thighs.

Adam presses his lips together, hums his answer and nods, a quick and shaky thing. He’d found himself inexplicably hungry for it, several months ago, the first time, and had started to ever since. People and emotions make little sense but the body is fairly clear about what it wants. Adam presses back against Nigel’s hand, sinking fingers deeper, and groans, eyes bright when he meets Nigel’s from beneath his fringe.

“I can never do it how you do it,” he pouts, shivering on a surprised laugh when Nigel strokes his prostate again, just watching him.

It is three in the fucking morning, he has to book a flight and actually catch the fucking thing in a few hours to sort this shit out, and Adam is sitting in his lap riding his hand like he hasn’t been fucked in weeks.

Adam’s a fucking _gift_.

And if he only has a few hours before he has to leave the kid, he’s going to make the fucking most of it. Though Adam is stretched tight, Nigel presses another finger against him, working in little pushes that time with the movement of his wrist. It’s worth it for the scalding heat that burns his lover’s lips and spreads like wildfire over his cheeks. It’s worth it for the sweet little sound that Adam presses into his cheek, unable to catch his breath enough to kiss the older man.

“Easy, darling,” Nigel laughs low pleasure resonant as he presses all three fingers into him, and watches the strain and release of it all soften Adam’s features like a revelation. He doesn’t know what others see when they look at Adam - a nerdy kid, sweet but strange, almost insurmountably awkward. But Nigel is glad, fucking grateful to God or Satan or whoever fucking brought them together, that he’s the only who gets to see him like this.

An angel.

A little bird.

His.

It doesn’t take much beyond freeing Adam’s cock from the confines of his stretched underpants and stroking him with a calloused hand for Adam’s hands to tremble against his chest. He splays his fingers in the tight squeeze of Adam’s body and curls them, and grins as his darling comes undone. Ribbons of wet heat rope against his belly, dripping thick and shining over his hand, but Nigel only has eyes for Adam, mouth slack and gasping, hair spilling into his eyes, barely open as he shudders his release.

“Fucking beautiful,” he sighs, and Adam’s lips curl in a smile before he presses them to Nigel’s, trembling as he’s held, still stroked and stretched and touched. Slowly, he wriggles free and looks at Nigel properly, hands on either side of his face to hold him still, eyes up and dark.

“I want to make you feel good, now,” he says, stroking under Nigel’s eyes even as the man playfully spreads his fingers in him and Adam gasps and squirms. Nigel grins at him.

“Do you, darling?”

“Yes.” Another kiss, lingering, before Adam pulls back to just nuzzle, just once. “But I want to do it in bed, so you will need to -”

It takes little effort to stand, holding the kid still, and Adam makes a high and delighted sound as he’s just carried, like a child, where he wants to go.

“Okay,” he laughs. “Okay. But I will book you a flight for the late afternoon, not the morning. They can wait and I’m not tired yet.”

Nigel watches him in quiet wonderment, gaze caressing still-ruddy cheeks and a sweet, crooked smile and big blue eyes. He wants to lay alongside him, pull him back against his chest and press inside slowly, again and again for as long as he can stand. He wants to stay here, rather than go to fucking Norway, but there’s an unfamiliar tug in his chest at the thought that - as he has for nearly a year now - he’ll come back to this when he’s done.

Home.

“I don’t know what I’d do without you, darling.”

Adam’s smile grows a little wider and he shakes his head, looping his arms around Nigel’s neck as he’s carried back towards the bedroom. He tightens his legs, and shrugs a little, cheek resting against Nigel’s shoulder. “You’d probably book a flight for the morning, because you’re impatient, and then you’d be really angry when you had to be at the airport so soon,” he answers, reasonably. “Security would be hard on you because you’d yell a lot.”

Nigel grins - the kid isn’t wrong - and sprawls over him in the bed, watching Adam when he coils and stretches, smiling sleepy and pleased.

“Afternoon, then,” he agrees, with a kiss to seal it. “That’ll give me plenty of time to wear you out before I go.”

_Sunday._

As with all routines, leaving notes for himself, having a speed dial, keeping tabs on his - to Adam at least - significant other overseas has become a habit. As with all habits, once ingrained, they take a very long time to forget. So that, at least, it a blessing, when he wakes up at an unholy hour, shaking and sweating and alone.

No matter where he searches on the bed he’s alone.

No Nigel.

The light is found where it usually is, and is clicked on to illuminate the Post-It stuck around the rim of the lamp: _Nigel’s gone to Norway_ followed by the flight number and departure and arrival times. If most nights this helps, tonight it does nothing more than panic Adam further. He doesn’t return for another two days, and Adam is scared _now_.

He reaches for his cellphone, his personal one, not the burner, and doesn’t even make it through the code locking it before just giving up to use the emergency dial - it only has the one number anyway.

It rings once, and then a half before Nigel answers with a grunt. “Hi baby.” Whether he’s sleeping, drunk, fighting - it’s hard to tell but his voice is rough, and taut with panic at seeing this number - in particular - appear on his phone. “How are you, darling? Are you sleeping?”

Adam makes a sound, happy just to hear his voice, but it’s still not close enough, still not _here_ , and he curls into a ball and rests on Nigel’s side of the bed that still smells like him and tries to hold himself together. He wishes it could be easy to stop, he wishes it could be something he could even control. 

It’s irrational and frustrating and he knows all of the mechanics but can never seem to work them the right way to make it not happen again. He can’t manage words yet. He wants to say he misses him. He wants to say he was sleeping but then he woke up and Nigel wasn’t there. He manages part of it, he thinks, a murmur, a word, maybe just his name.

“I’m here, angel,” Nigel purrs, but even the warmth of his tone can’t hide the tension there, anxiety rising just in hearing Adam this way from so far. “I’m with you, okay? Fuck off,” he spits to someone else in the background, and the din of noise behind Nigel’s voice becomes quieter.

There’s a click and a long breath, sighed against the phone as Nigel lights a cigarette. “Breathe, Adam. Can you do that for me, gorgeous? Let me hear you take a deep breath.”

Adam does, one breath, then another, still shaking but his lungs fill now, they don’t burn. It’s strange that someone so brusque, so harsh and so damned impatient can coax such calm from him, but Adam has stopped applying logic to Nigel, or to things he does, or to how he makes him feel. He just is. He just does. And that’s – surprisingly for Adam – enough for him.

He wonders if Nigel’s already talking to them, if he’s working his way through the crates or supervising money, if he’s had to hurt himself in order to get others to listen. That, still, Adam knows he likes to do, even when he has the option of pointing out the fuck up the entire team will be in should they snitch or renege. He has too much energy, Adam had decided several months before, and if that energy goes nowhere he will explode with it.

Maybe Adam needs to learn to hit something too, so the panic goes away.

“Did you drink water on your flight?” Adam asks, voice small but there, coherent stringing of words together.

Nigel huffs a laugh, so close to the phone it’s like he’s there, right there, nuzzled up against Adam’s ear. “Yes,” he sighs, a smile smoothing the harshness of his voice. “Two bottles, because you told me I should. And a handful of the little bottles of whiskey. But I had water.”

Another drag crackles into the phone and Nigel sighs, not just exhaling smoke, but trying to alleviate the clenching of his throat from hearing Adam this way. “I brought back sodas for you, while you were asleep. Two-percent milk. That fucking awful cardboard fucking cereal you like.”

Something in the sound Adam makes tears at the man, and his voice presses urgent into the phone. “Darling, please - tell me what I can do. Tell me what you need and it’s fucking yours, okay? Fuck,” he spits, impotent anger at nothing but his own absence.

Adam just bites his tongue and curls up a little tighter. Because what he wants is Nigel back home, right now, and he knows that can’t happen, not with a flight that long, and layover, and time difference and customs. Not with the work they do.

He hates feeling so incompetent, that he _needs_ another human being present to validate himself, to make sense of himself. Adam doesn’t like needing, and he needs a lot. So he just lets out a long breath and sets his teeth to his bottom lip, eyes closing as he nuzzles the pillow, arms tight around himself and phone on speaker just in front of him.

“Just tell me about your trip. You can swear… please swear… just tell me. Talk to me. Say anything, please.”

Nigel sighs hard, and Adam can nearly see the smoke pluming grey around his head. “Everyone’s a fucking idiot,” Nigel grunts. “No fucking surprises there. Nearly everyone, anyway, I guess there’s a few who are marginally less fucking insipid than the others. It’s all the fucking same everywhere. I don’t blame Norway.”

The wind catches against the mouthpiece of the phone and then quiets as Nigel turns away from it. “We got what we needed here, thanks to you. Showed up right as it should, got it unlocked and distributed. They should be fine now that I’ve shown them how to remove their fucking heads from their asses.” His throat clicks as he swallows, words still as tense as the man’s body. “Now I’m fucking pissed that I had to come at all. Stuck in a fucking fjord that smells like fucking fish instead of at home.”

In an instant, he decides, “I’ll come home early. Tonight if I can get a flight. Now if I can fucking bribe it into happening, darling, will you be alright? I’ll be home as fast as I fucking can, I fucking swear it.”

Adam hums, another of those weak little noises that he can’t seem to strengthen or control at all. He knows it upsets Nigel to hear him like this, remembers how distraught he had been when they had fought, that one time, and he had been right there and still not allowed to do anything but watch.

Adam hates upsetting him.

“Is the heavy blanket still on the bed, baby?”

“Weighted,” Adam swallows. “Weighted blanket. It’s in the closet. I put it away.”

“Can you go get it for me? Take the phone with you, darling, I’ll be here. Tell me when you get it.”

It takes Adam a lot of effort to get up, but he does, slowly rolling himself to the side of the bed and seeking with bare feet over the carpet. The blanket isn’t far, he hadn’t folded it too meticulously away, just to get it off the bed while they were both on it. He finds it and yanks it back behind himself as he climbs into bed again.

“I got it.”

“Good, angel, very good.” Nigel’s throat clicks again as he swallows and sighs. “Can you wrap yourself up in it for me? Like a - a tube. A - what the fuck are they called - goddammit.”

“A -”

“The food. The fucking food, with the thing wrapped around the beans and -”

“A burrito?”

“Yes,” Nigel breathes. “A fucking burrito. Darling, just lay on one side of it and roll yourself up like - like you’re the beans. Okay? Keep the phone. I’m going to stay on until you fall asleep and then I’ll hang up. Only then, just so I can book the first fucking flight out of this shithole.”

Adam laughs, just one little snort of sound, but it’s enough, and does as Nigel suggests, rolling himself up until he’s swaddled, until the weight presses warm and heavy against him and he can nuzzle into the pillow and the phone beside it with a sigh.

“You’ll get the next flight out?”

“Yes, the first fucking one.”

“Won’t that screw up the –“

“No darling, it’s all finished, all sorted. I will go, I’ll get the fucking flight and get back to you.”

“Okay,” Adam sighs, mumbles something incoherent against the pillow before setting his eyes on the dark screen of the phone and just breathing near it, matching Nigel’s own. “I’m sorry.”

“You haven’t done anything wrong,” Nigel says, genuine surprise in his voice. “Not a fucking thing wrong in the world. Don’t apologize.” A pause, and the man huffs a laugh, despite the frustration in his voice. “If I can get out tonight, fucking now, it’s - eight hours flight? Eight fucking hours. An hour to the airport, an hour home.”

“Ten.”

“Ten,” agrees Nigel. “Ten fucking hours, goddammit, and then I’ll be home. You’ll just be up for breakfast then, maybe, but I want you to sleep, okay? If you can, sparrow, if you can for me. Are your eyes closed?”

“No,” Adam answers, and Nigel can’t help but grin at the honesty of it.

“Smart-ass,” he purrs. “Close your eyes, okay? Deep breathes in your - in your fucking burrito. I’m going to stay on the phone until you sleep or it dies or I’m on the fucking plane.”

He does, just that. Little conversation shared about how the city looks, the steep mountains Nigel saw earlier in the day, trying to recall every small, seemingly insignificant thing that he can to make it come alive for Adam. He talks about how it stinks like fucking fish so close to the water. He talks about the food he ate. Anything. Everything. Until Adam’s breath quiets and grows long, and the gentle question of his name yields no answer but a sleepy sound.

 _Monday_.

The apartment is silent, despite it being past the time Adam is usually up bustling in the kitchen following his routine. Nigel sets the keys and his bag to the floor and locks the door before toeing his shoes off and making his way to the bedroom.

There, Adam lays curled in his blanket, small and asleep and breathing slowly, face relaxed. The phone in front of him is blank-screened and silent, maybe the battery’s gone, maybe just saving power to avoid it. Either way, it is one of the most endearing things Nigel has ever seen. Adam’s nose just brushes the corner of the screen, the glass fogging with every breath before it dissipates.

He removes the phone carefully, despite the jet-lag that rattles his core and makes the whole room seem strangely slower, as if underwater. Two long flights, different time zones, there and back again in rapid order and with too much to drink along the way and too much up his nose while he was there.

And worth it. Entirely worth it to be back here, home once more.

Nigel doesn’t try to unwrap the kid, wary of waking him when he’s still so deep in sleep. Instead, he sheds his stale clothing to the floor, down to only his underpants, and with careful movements not to shift the bed, he lays down and presses himself to Adam’s back.

Warm arms surround his sparrow, and only when he feels his breath ruffle the hair at the nape of Adam’s neck do the muscles in Nigel’s body begin to unwind, coiled tight from the phone call until now.

He doesn’t know when he falls asleep, but Nigel wakes to shifting beneath him, fussy sounds of a sleepy Adam as the kid turns in his blanket and seeks against him with soft nose and warm lips.

“You’re home really early,” he mumbles, making no effort to pull himself free of the blanket, snuggling into the weight and warmth of the man against him, eyes closed, entirely trusting despite the panic not hours before.

Nigel smells of alcohol and sweat, of recycled air and old leather from his jacket. He smells like smoke and the sharp tang of cocaine. He smells like old blood and exhaustion, and Adam breathes him in deep and hums his contentment against Nigel’s throat. Strong, tired fingers work through Adam’s tangled curls, to pull him nearer still, and Nigel rests his chin atop Adam’s head, voice thick with sleep.

“I missed you too much to stay away,” he says, and with a sigh, rests his cheek against his angel’s hair. “Fucking Adam.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> While that's all we have for now for these two, we hope to see them again soon. Writing them together and letting each show their strengths and failings has been an utter joy, and we hope you all enjoyed it as much as we did. Thank you for reading, for sharing, for the kudos and the comments - y'all make this all worthwhile! <3

**Author's Note:**

> Midnighters: thieves.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Count To Three](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5037982) by [TheSeaVoices](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSeaVoices/pseuds/TheSeaVoices)
  * [F**king Footie Pajamas, Darling](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4937110) by [StagsInSilence](https://archiveofourown.org/users/StagsInSilence/pseuds/StagsInSilence)




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